"I have always believed that packaging is a key factor in the purchasing decision and especially in our industry", said Alain Corre, Ubi Soft's Managing Director for Europe, the Asia Pacific region and South America. "On top of the great quality of the softwares, we want to offer more to our customers by further developing their immersion into our games through attractive packagings".
Raven Shield will be available in stores in 2 different editions : the Standard and the Limited Edition.
The Standard Edition consists of a digipack (2 CDs) in a metallic-foiled slip-case.
The Limited Edition consists of the same digipack in a mini-Sierra box, which is enclosed in a black balaclava. This edition includes two signed concept-arts and a giant poster of the Rainbow armory.
The creative idea behind this standard packaging was to create something faithful to the game universe. The digipack is therefore recreating what could be a desk from a Rainbow operatives with the unloaded weapons and the file on the coming mission. Once the gamer will open the digipack, he will be immediately in the Rainbow anti-terrorist team universe.
The use of the metallic foil for the slipcase helps us remain true to what the game is dedicated to : 100% pure realism. Therefore, foil makes our box really look like astandard and used -metallic desk.
For the limited edition, our objective was to create an event in our distributors' store shelves with a radically new packaging style, actually being the first videogame packaging using tissue. The idea was to represent who you are going to be in this game and the balaclava is clearly representing the image we all have from the counter terrorist assault team, always masked, unknown and deadly serious.
Splinter Cell is also using a DVD-style digipack for its PC edition. This edition includes, for the first time, 3 CDs and also a Splinter Cell sticker.
The graphical choices were made according to the Splinter Cell graphical chart, focusing mainly on the lighting, shadow and technological aspects.
The four sections of the digipack allowed us to present many artworks of Sam Fisher, as well as in-game screenshots. In addition, we chose a sober, black / green design and a simple protection varnish, to avoid unwanted shining effects.
We also decided to play around with the goggles:
Firstly, there is a progression when you open the digipack: you see Sam with his goggles, then we zoom in on Sam's face to be more focused on the goggles, and finally we present them alone as Sam's signature
Secondly, the goggles have three lenses and the game contains three CDs. Therefore, we designed each CD-Rom in the style of a lens. When the player opens the digipack, he can immediately see what Sam sees: different environments and situations.
Finally, we included a surprise: as Sam has the opportunity to use night, thermal and target vision, we wanted the player to experience these features immediately. So if you take out each CD from the digipack, you will see the CD artwork through a different vision.
The last surprise in this pack is a half-wire/half textured sticker of Sam, which will be a limited edition in the first batch of boxes!!
Rayman 3: Hoodlum Havoc will feature a classic DVD box, but the front image will use a spectacular lenticular 3D aspect !
This special front image will be seen on the PC and PS2 packaging.
The lenticular packaging idea for Rayman 3 was one step further in the immersion which is one of the main aspects of the game. When you play with Rayman you dive straight into a unique and bizarre universe packed with never before seen plants and deliriously strange creatures. Despite the hyper-stylised environments, visuals feel so "real" that you immerse in it from the first seconds of gameplay.
We wanted a packaging capable of reflecting this immediate immersion in Rayman 3. First we worked on the background: a mysterious dark blue night behind Rayman that submerges you to the magical cartoon-fantasy universe. Then the immersion effect was further enhanced by a strong 3D feel giving depth to the image thanks to the lenticular technology. This 3D feel is so strong that few people can resist the temptation of pushing their fingers in the wide open grapnel jaw