The slowing pace does not affect their money bags, though…

Ubisoft released its financial results, and in it, Yves Guillemot, the CEO of the French company, says that the gaming industry is thriving, and even publishers who aren’t into the battle royale fad yet are also making money.

Let’s take a look at the raw numbers: Ubisoft saw a 19% year-on-year increase to 1.73 billion euro in the previous fiscal year which ended on March 31, and the net income also saw a 29% growth to 139.5 million euros – both got a minor boost by Far Cry 5, which launched just a few days before the end of Match.

Assassin’s Creed: Origins showed the franchise’s best Q4 performance, the Tom Clancy games are also flying (Rainbow Six: Siege – 30 million registered players; The Division – 20 million, Ghost Recon: Wildlands – 10 million), and thus, the French are optimistic about the FY2019 results, too.

However, Skull & Bones, their game announced during last year’s E3, overshadows them a bit, which was delayed by a fiscal year to April 2019-March 2020 due to „the acceleration of our digital transformation, growth in back-catalog sales, and excellent momentum of recent releases, Ubisoft has decided to give itself more time to develop Skull and Bones to offer players an even more engaging experience,” according to Ubisoft. Delaying the pirate game means they reduced their expectations from 23 million sales to 19 (which means they expect to sell four million copies of Skull & Bones), the revenue saw a drop from 2.1 billion euros to 2.05 billion, but the digital distribution percentage is now pushed to 65% from 60%, and the back catalog sales are also increased from 45% to 50%.

„What we see now is we can launch games whenever we are ready and whenever we want, just because there’s a good appetite for new products on the market, thanks to the fact that there are less big games coming to the industry. That gives us the possibility to choose when to launch because it’s the quality that will make the difference,” Guillemot says. They plan to decrease the 5-6 annual AAA releases to 3-4, due to the back catalog, the live services (loot boxes, skins – think of R6: Siege), and „other digital content,” as well as the agreement with Tencent. The company will publish R6: Siege for example in China on mobile and PC.

Guillemot also said that he’d like to see their AAA games available on mobile – we don’t know yet if they will make direct ports or use streaming methods (think of PlayStation Now), but his idea is intriguing.

So – as we wrote with technically every other publisher recently – this company is flying. And the surprise? They will announce something AAA at the E3! (Our guess is Watch_Dogs 3…)

Source: Ubisoft