There was a period where it looked like Ubisoft was poised to randomly allow their teams to make smallish "indie"-style games that were pretty different from their usual fare. They weren't all winners, but I Am Alive, Child of Light, Valiant Hearts: The Great War, Grow Home, and Grow Up were some interesting stuff between all of the Assassin's Creeds and Far Crys and Tom Clancy'ss.

But thinking about the last year or so, it seems they've reconsidered that idea, since Grow Home was a super early 2015 release, Grow Up was a mid 2016 release, and that's about it because there is no small project on the horizon that I'm aware of. This saddens me, because while the gameplay didn't quite wow me, both Child of Light and Valiant Hearts had styyyyyyyyyyyle. And Grow Home was a delightful little weird platformer. I would've liked to see them experiment more with that scope of game development.

Did they announce those games much ahead of time? Other than maybe Child of Light, I don't remember seeing much about those games before they were out. I could be wrong though, I don't pay a lot of attention to pre-release coverage.

I like all of those games (except I Am Alive, which I never played), so I hope they make more.

Also, they made those kinda-bad Assassin's Creed Chronicles games. Those seemed like experimental small-team games. I hope they don't make more of those.

@bisonhero: I don't know for certain, but I was under the impression that it probably isn't given Yves's recent comments about focusing on games as a service driven by player narrative.

I took that to mean more games like The Division less like Valiant hearts.

http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=1306927

Yves Guillemot, Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer, stated We are creating powerful franchises

“Our excellent performance in the second quarter as well as the sharp improvement in our profitability during the first six months of the fiscal year are proof that we have gotten both our digital strategy and our approach to multiplayer games right. The Crew, The Division and Rainbow Six Siege each have more than 10 million registered players, demonstrating that we are effectively executing our business development plan and moving towards an ever-more recurring model. .All of our actions and initiatives are aimed at achieving this objective that offer long-term visibility. Our multi-studios organization enables us to have regular games releases. And the Live experiences for our consoles and PC games, including our investments in eSports, encourage long-term player engagement. As a result, Ubisoft is well positioned to achieve very high value creation over the coming years.”

Blood Dragon was sick too.