This Thursday at the end of the afternoon, Ubisoft communicated its quarterly results of its 2024 fiscal year covering the period from September 1 to December 31, 2023. With a net bookings of 626.2 million euros slightly above the 610 million euros that the publisher predicted, this quarter saw an increase compared to the same period last year of 43.1% in net worths and more generally 45.1% over the nine months of the current financial year. The few new releases at the end of 2023 are to thank for this, including Assassin’s Creed Miragein addition to the back catalog. But what interests us above all in what has been communicated is the evocation of line-up future.
Thus, rumors thatAssassin’s Creed Codename Red kind at the end of the year seem to be confirmed, which is absolutely not surprising. Indeed, it is planned for fiscal year 2025 which will run from April 1, 2024 to March 31, 2025. Another premium game, Star Wars Outlaws will also be showing during this periodwith a launch confirmed for 2024. Côté free-to-play, The Division Resurgence And Rainbow Six Mobile are waiting. However, we will have to wait until May for more details regarding the other games which will appear during the firm’s next financial year.
THE CEO ofUbisoft Yves Guillemot gave a very long speech for the occasion, summarizing the publisher’s situation well:
Ubisoft reported a strong third quarter, with net values slightly above our expectations. This quarter gave us positive momentum and marks the start of our recovery towards consistently creating and delivering high-quality, sustainable games. Our performance was driven by the releases of Assassin’s Creed Mirage and Avatar: Frontiers of Pandoraby the pursuit of the solid trajectory of The Crew Motorfestas well as by the solid performance of our back-catalogue. The latter was powered by the success of Rainbow Six Siegewho recorded strong growth in playing time and his net worths, and by the entire Assassin’s Creed franchise which benefited from the launch of Assassin’s Creed Mirage. The robustness and longevity of our catalog is proof of the attention we have paid to consistently offering high-quality titles loved by fans.
I would like to salute the remarkable work carried out by the Ubisoft teams. They have strived to offer quality games that match our ambition to provide excellent entertainment to players. The overwhelmingly positive player response to our latest major releases, such as Assassin’s Creed Mirage and The Crew Motorfest, shows that we are indeed moving in the right direction. We have also made great progress in terms of visual quality and richness of the universes thanks to our proprietary Snowdrop engine, which was used in the development ofAvatar: Frontiers of Pandora, a game that set a new industry benchmark in terms of world creation.
The fourth quarter represents the opportunity to continue this dynamic, with the launch of Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown, a game that illustrates Ubisoft’s ability to bring iconic brands back to life, and the release of Skull and Bones, which is generating increasingly positive engagement following the reveal of its end game and post-launch content. This new brand has the potential to establish itself as a new live experience in the long term. The upcoming launch of XDefiant will take us a further step in the world of free-to-play, in line with our strategy of strengthening our position in live services and increasing the recurrence of our activity. We also anticipate important partnerships, including non-exclusive licensing of streaming rights from Activision Blizzard which we acquired last October.
Regarding our overall organization, we continue to actively deploy transformation initiatives within the group in order to respond to market developments and accelerate the execution of our strategy while reducing the cost of our structure. In the third quarter, we made further progress in streamlining our operations and, at the same time, saw overall talent retention continue to improve. We are firmly committed to continuing on this path in the coming months to achieve our cost reduction goals and better position ourselves for long-term collective success.
In the future, we are preparing to a very promising line-up for the 2025 financial yearwith notably the upcoming release of Star Wars Outlaws in 2024which should constitute a major milestone in the video game industry, especially given the undeniable appeal of this legendary license which will arrive for the first time in the open world territory, as well as Assassin’s Creed Codename Red, which takes place in the long-awaited universe of feudal Japan. We look forward to revealing the full extent of the creative capabilities of the Ubisoft teams, who are working hard to make these games a success that meets players’ expectations.
But that’s not all. The current fourth quarter has in fact been the subject of particular attention. In addition to the arrival within a few days of Skull and Boneson which the expectations of inflow of money seem quite high alongside Prince of Persia: The Lost Crownmention was made of a contribution from XDefiant with its Season 0meaning that its release is really very close.
And in the list of upcoming launches, in addition to the various seasonal contents, we find Valiant Hearts: Coming Homeknown in French under the title Unknown Soldiers: Brothers in Arms. This sequel to the excellent Unknown Soldiers: Memories of the Great War had only seen the light of day on mobiles under iOS and Android via Netflix, necessarily limiting its access. The last days, a PC version had been listed on the side of GRAC (Game Rating and Administration Committee) in South Korea and we now have confirmation of its arrival on computers, but also on PS5, PS4, Xbox Series X|S, Xbox One and Switch. Needless to say, fans should be delighted. All that remains is to wait for a release date.
If you have not played the first episode, a boxed version including a download code is sold for €9.99 on Amazon to the Switch.
Read also: TEST Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown, everything comes in time to those who wait
| Alexandre SAMSON (Omega Law) Responsible Proofreader – Editor | ||
| Addicted to Assassin’s Creed and Destiny, big fan of RPGs and passionate about video game experiences in general. Reader of comics (DC) and various mangas (One Piece!). Chemist by training and Whovian at heart. | ||
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