Ubisoft also revealed its quarterly financial report, which you can read on this link.

In the last nine months, the PRI, or „Player Recurring Investment” (which means microtransactions, such as DLC, season passes, cosmetic items, etc…) generated 318.5 million euros for the French publisher, which is an 87.4% year-on-year increase, and it also was responsible for 26.7% of the total sales (which is yet another increase from last year’s 20.9%). Ubisoft says that the extra digital content requires less R&D and marketing costs – as an example, they mentioned Assassin’s Creed: Origins‘ flaming horse, which costs 1499 Helix (or 15 euros). The publisher follows the results of Electronic Arts and Activision Blizzard, and its goal is to catch up to them with the PRI percentage (see second image below).

Rainbow Six: Siege, which launched in December 2015, hit a record number of monthly active users in December 2017 (!) – this is one of those games that handle the microtransactions without harming the players’ chances to succeed, as they offer only cosmetic items like Activision Blizzard does with Overwatch. Alain Martinez, Ubisoft’s chief financial officer, says that they consider loot boxes as „a question of quality and choice.” He added that we should get the „right quality” of content for our money and that the boxes should be completely optional to purchase. He also said that the controversy surrounding loot boxes as gambling is overblown and the discussion around it is a lot calmer than before. (We’ll see about that, Monsieur Martinez…)

Ubisoft generated 725 million euros from sales in the last quarter, easily hitting the target, and it was mostly led by Assassin’s Creed: Origins, which is the return of the franchise from its sabbatical. The game is considered by the French publisher as another title that has the right approach to loot boxes, and Yves Guillemot, the CEO of Ubisoft, believes it will have double the amount of lifetime sales than its predecessor, 2015’s Syndicate.

We’d like to point at the third image with „the PC opportunity” – five years ago, Ubisoft only generated 7% of its sales revenue on this platform, which has increased to 18%. The PlayStation 4 is still the leader with 44% last quarter and 41% in FY2017 (since April 2017). It’s followed by the Xbox One (25/24%), and the Nintendo Switch is already at 6/8%. The prev-gen consoles are only on 4/3%, and the others (mobile, ancillaries… see the fourth image) put 6/8% into the hat. North America is still the biggest market for Ubisoft, but Europe is not far behind.

Finally, a paragraph for the Nintendo Switch: on the sixth image, you can see that Ubisoft is the number one third-party publisher for the Switch, and their game, Mario + Rabbids: Kingdom Battle is also the top-selling third-party title on the platform. Martinez says Ubisoft is „very pleased,” and Guillemot says that their relationship with Nintendo will „continue to grow,” and they are „going to do more things.” However, he couldn’t go into more detail yet.

After Take-Two and Activision Blizzard, we have another happy publisher here…

Source: GameSpot, PCGamer, DualShockers, DualShockers, DualShockers, DualShockers