Ubisoft is going all out in the promotion of the upcoming Watch Dogs: Legion, and that includes updating box art of its older games to depict DedSec, the lead hacker characters from the Watch Dogs universe. Legion is the third game in the Watch Dogs series, shifting the action from America to the UK to follow a new group of hackers trying to take down a totalitarian government. The game, which was delayed past its original March release date in late 2019, will be a launch title for both next-gen consoles in addition to its current-gen, PC, and Stadia release on October 29.
It's no surprise that Ubisoft is tapping into its other franchises to promote the upcoming open-world action game. In its most recent Ubisoft Forward digital event, the publisher announced that the game would cross over with the Assassin's Creed franchise unofficially as part of its DLC season pass. Said DLC will also include an additional story campaign featuring Aiden Pearce from the original Watch Dogs as well as masked hacker Wrench from Watch Dogs 2. Watch Dogs: Legion's guest stars won't even be limited to video game characters, as British grime star Stormzy is set to be the star of a mission in the main game.
In an attempt to help get the word out about Watch Dogs: Legion (and potentially confuse a whole lot of buyers), a whole swath of Ubisoft's Xbox One titles have been "hacked" to include the game's smoking pig mascot on their box art. Twitter's Wario64 was one of the first to point out the changed box art, posting high-resolution images of the promotional covers. The campaign ranges from a set of sticker details on the Deluxe Edition of Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six Siege to a full character replacement on Assassin's Creed: The Ezio Collection.
The "hacks" also still seem to be rolling out at the time of writing, as the pig-masked character has shown up on For Honor, several Far Cry games, and Steep. None of Ubisoft's official social media accounts have commented on the altered cover art, spending most of the day instead promoting the newly announced Ubisoft Connect online service that will launch alongside Watch Dogs: Legion at the end of the month. It's unclear if this campaign will extend to storefronts beyond Xbox or if the art will make it to actual physical copies of games, which could become a collector's item in the vein of the Deadpool DVD sleeves that released in 2018 to promote Deadpool 2.
Considering the digital nature of most games retail nowadays (especially in 2020), it's amazing that this Watch Dogs: Legion campaign is the first to take advantage of the inherent space afforded to publishers of many games on digital storefronts. With so many games to choose from, odds are high that a player may browse over a Ubisoft title during a trip to the Xbox Store, and said player will get an ad for Ubisoft's latest title in the process this week. While this type of advertising won't work for every game, it's very in character for the Watch Dogs franchise, so it likely won't cause too much controversy.
Watch Dogs: Legion will be released on PS4, Xbox One, Stadia, and PC on October 29; on Xbox Series X/S on November 12; and on PS5 on November 12.
Source: Wario64
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October 22, 2020 at 04:57AM
