MCV/DEVELOP News, events, research and jobs from the games industry
Ubisoft has released its sales figures for the third quarter of fiscal 2020-21 (the three months ended 31st December, 2020), showing that the company has achieved the strongest quarter in its history.
For the quarter, Ubisoft reported over €1 billion in bookings, a 120 per cent increase year over year, driven by the releases of Watch Dogs: Legion, Just Dance 2021, Immortals Fenyx Rising and Assassin’s Creed Valhalla.
Assassin’s Creed Valhalla has been particularly successful for the company, and is the biggest launch in the history of the franchise, in terms of bookings and engagement.
Just Dance 2021 meanwhile is the most successful entry to the franchise in six years, with net bookings up sharply compared to Just Dance 2020. The franchise’s has had a strong quarter in general, with a 200 per cent surge for its back catalogue of titles.
The company’s back catalogue in general performed well for the company. Brawlhalla, Mario + Rabbids Kingdom Battle, Far Cry 5, The Crew 2 and Anno 1800 have all seen “robust growth.” Player engagement in Assassin’s Creed Odyssey and Origins have seen a steep rise, and Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six Siege continues to perform, having seen 70 million players registered since its launch
“Our strategy continues to bear fruits. We achieved the strongest quarter in Ubisoft’s history, by far, thanks to the quality of our releases and the depth of our catalog,” said Yves Guillemot, co-founder and Chief Executive Officer of Ubisoft. “We are immensely proud of our teams who, in exceptionally challenging times, launched four great titles across multiple platforms and simultaneously continued to enrich our Live services. This is an unparalleled achievement and they showed remarkable adaptability and resilience. Our ability to execute at such a high level of quality demonstrates the power of our production model and the sustainability of our organization.
“In a context of increasing engagement and very supportive industry trends, the first nine months of the year confirmed that we are continuing to move towards an increasingly pronounced recurrence of our revenues. Therefore, we expect our highly profitable back-catalog to account for an even larger share of our business going forward.”
Net bookings for the fourth quarter of 2020-21 are expected to come in at between €464 million and €524 million, and for the full year, the company expects net bookings of between €2,220 million and €2,280 million and Non-IFRS operating income of between €450 million and €500 million.
