It's natural for businesses to hype their products. Unfortunately, this habit of over-promising and under-delivering has become a common business practice with major publishers like Ubisoft, Activision Blizzard (NASDAQ: ATVI), and Electronic Arts ( EA 0.61%). However, Ubisoft made two fatal mistakes with Watch Dogs - it repeatedly hyped the title as the 'biggest new IP' ever, then rushed the game out the door before it was fully tested. Watch Dogs reportedly had a budget of around $68 million - much less than the later Assassin's Creed titles, which cost around $100 million each. That's not really a fair comparison - with a budget of $265 million, Grand Theft Auto V was notably the most expensive video game in history. Gamers criticized the lack of choices and interactivity with the Watch Dogs world, especially when compared to Take-Two's Grand Theft Auto V. Beyond its major technical issues, the game fell short of the lofty expectations that Ubisoft had set two years ago.

The Xbox One version fared slightly better with a 5.6, while the PS4 version earned a 6.3. On review aggregator site Metacritic, users gave the game's PC version a 4.6/10 rating. Meanwhile, graphical and gameplay glitches marred the experience for gamers who could actually get the game to work.

For others, the game randomly deleted the player's progress. For some gamers, the game simply refused to load. The general consensus was that Watch Dogs was a bug-filled mess across all platforms. In June, Ubisoft CEO Yves Guillemot announced that Watch Dogs was the most pre-ordered next-gen game in the company's history, and that it would match initial sales of the first Assassin's Creed game with 6.2 million units sold.īut when the game finally arrived for Sony's ( SONY -5.70%) PS4, Microsoft's ( MSFT 0.80%) Xbox One, and Windows in late May, jaws dropped - in utter disappointment. After an impressive debut at E3 2012, preview videos revealed a fascinating game that blended elements of Assassin's Creed and Take-Two's ( TTWO 0.27%) Grand Theft Auto with an emphasis on open world hacking. Ubisoft's ( UBSFF -1.24%) Watch Dogs was one of the most anticipated games of the year.

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