Ubisoft's redemption

Yes and no.

Ubisoft seems to have opened up to risks (changing recipe in their franchises + more new IPs) to scare off Vivendi. Although, the drop in sales of the AC series and a few others things probably made them realize they had to change the recipe too.

I think we happened is more related to internal changes they started in 2011 that only really come to conclusion in 2016. They moved to DevOps with microservices architectures and that including a lots of new systems, technologies, procedures, etc to learn. During that period, development teams that should be working on making games were busy doing supports/development on/for the DevOps stuff. How I know that? Some of my coworkers participate at a conference given by Ubisoft and other companies on the subject (we got the exact same issues they did with it too).

I don't know much about ubisoft in the past since I only ever played Rainbow 6 3....until two years ago. Since then me and my wife bought Far Cry 4, 5, Primal, Odyssey, and GR: Wildlands...which is also pretty much everything we've bought since Andromeda came out.

If I understand stand GaaS right then Ubisoft is the one pushing it and the ones that seem to be the forerunners of it. Both the new Ghost Recon games, Far Cry, even Odyssey.

That’s why I started the whole thing by saying that it’s a matter of priorities. That said, given the reactions the EA and Ubi games received in the past 3 years, I’d say I am not the only one with that kind of bias.

Definitely not. But the gameplay they do provide just ... flows well. I really like to play Ubi games when I come how from work and don't really want to think too much, just go with the game flow. Most Ubi games do that sort of thing pretty well. Currently playing AC: Rogue and it almost puts me in a trance state each night.

Serza : I can't really speak to the other titles (not big on R6, Ghost Recon, SIlent Hunter and the like) but as far as AC is concerned, I think you might be looking at the older games through some pretty thick nostalgia glasses.

I've been replaying the entire series, starting with AC1 throughout the past year or so (I am now at Rogue, usually write my thoughts on the games in the "Nothing is true..." thread). And in comparison to what the series does today, the early iterations, AC1 especially was very bare bones and they were also very repetitive.
AC2 was a huge step forward and the story and pacing in the Ezio trilogy was great but come on, the gameplay was extremely simplistic with the counter-kills and stealth was much more of a game of chance (or just a matter of get as high up as possible, with very little variety). The next iteration (AC3 - Rogue) improved a little with mire different enemy types and more ranged weapons but still, you can basically play them in your sleep.
Also having played Origina and Odyssey in the same time period, I find those vastly improved in the gameplay, giving us much more options in combat, more thought through stealth mechanics and honestly, hack and slash without proper timing and evasion is sure to get you killed on anything but the lowest difficulty levels, especially against multiple or strong enemies (as opposed to the earlier ACs, where you could just walk into any fight unless it was simply forbidden by the mission).
Don't get me wrong, I like the older AC games just fine and had a lot of fun replaying them but sying that the series went from some sort of sophisticated gameplay wonder to a "hack & slash" is wrong IMO.

So yea, on that note at least, I strongly disagree.

Redeeming themselves?

Perhaps with Breakpoint, the redemption is tarnished.

Several game launches delayed.

Watch this space...

Yeah, for me, I'd say that Breakpoint should have been worked on some more. Still I'm having a blast playing it but there sure are some annoying bugs. 

The term predatory microtransaction should probably go away until people have a better grasp what they are talking about.