The French Publisher: Ubisoft has released its quarterly financial report.

Let’s start with the dry figures: the Q3 of the fiscal year (October-December), as well as the current fiscal year, aren’t that bright, and Ghost Recon: Breakpoint’s launch in September did not help matters either. Thus, the French company had 455.5 million euro of net bookings. It is a 24.8% year-on-year decrease from the previous year’s 605.8 million, but it still is higher than Ubisoft’s expectations of 410 million. By the end of March, their net bookings goal is 1.45 billion euros with 333 million in the final fiscal quarter – this is also about a 50% decrease year-on-year. In this quarter, the PC has brought in the most revenue (27%, a 3% increase from last year), and this platform has also seen the biggest growth in the past nine years, too. The reason behind it is the Ubisoft Store with its 73% revenue increase. We’ve spent 4.5 billion hours with their games this year so far in the current fiscal year, which is a big growth from the previous figure of two billion.

„Although the current fiscal year is well below our initial expectations, the third fiscal quarter saw excellent performances from several titles in our back catalogue – particularly Rainbow Six Siege, Assassin’s Creed Odyssey, The Crew 2 and Mario + Rabbids Kingdom Battle – and from the release of Just Dance 2020, which is back on the growth track. The fact that our number of active players, MAUs and PRI on consoles and PC have remained stable year on year at high levels clearly demonstrates the depth of our game’s portfolio and the firmer resilience of our business model,” Yves Guillemot, the CEO of Ubisoft, explained. Rainbow Six Siege has 55 million registered users, and in December, it broke the PRI (player recurring investment) records. (Also, MAU stands for monthly active users.)

In the 2021 fiscal year (running from April 1, 2020, until March 31, 2021), Ubisoft expects 2.6 billion euros of net bookings and 600 million euros of operating income. In this period, they want to release five AAA games. Three of them will arrive in the October-December quarter, and the other two will follow in Q1 2021. The new Assassin’s Creed (Ragnarok?), a new Far Cry (6?), Rainbow Six Quarantine, Gods and Monsters, and Watch Dogs: Legion will likely be Ubisoft’s „quintet,” and this year’s games will probably be the Assassin’s Creed-Rainbow Six-Watch Dogs axis. There won’t be any releases until the Autumn! The reason is fairly logical: the French company is waiting for the launch of the PlayStation 5 and the Xbox Series X, and the Rainbow Six-Watch Dogs-Gods and Monsters trio was delayed because of them. (On paper, they say it was due to quality, but that’s PR talk.)

We have to mention three ominously missing names. Skull & Bones. Beyond Good & Evil 2. Splinter Cell. Regarding Beyond Good & Evil, Guillemot said that „It’s not going to be in the five games we will announce.” Sure, there will be non-AAA releases this year (Roller Champions and Just Dance 2021), but it’s unlikely that they don’t consider Beyond Good & Evil 2 as a smaller title. Skull & Bones, which was announced at E3 2017, was meant to arrive in Fall 2018, only to be delayed to 2019, then 2020, and now possibly 2021. Kotaku’s Jason Schreier revealed on Twitter that this pirate game was rebooted several times, and the creative director left in late 2018. It means we’ll have to wait a lot for it…

And finally, Guillemot talked about the PlayStation 5 and the Xbox Series X: „Those consoles will be running almost all the back catalogue of the previous consoles. It will be something new in the industry. It will help the old generations to continue to be big consoles on the market for years to come.” Interesting.

Source: WCCFTech, Gamesindustry, PSL,

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