After presenting half-yearly results below expectations in October 2019 following the more than average sales of Ghost Recon Breakpoint or, to a lesser extent, The Division 2, Ubisoft shares with us this time the turnover of the third quarter from 2019-2020.
And, the first thing we see is that the French company is trying to raise the bar in the third quarter of 2019-2020 since it records a net book value of 455.5 million euros, or about 40 million d ‘euros more than the target. But it is still less than last year over the same period. The results are therefore down 24.8%. On the revenue side, the video game publisher earned 416.2 million euros compared to 562 million euros for the same period last year. There is then a drop of 25.9%.
However, this third quarter is saved by the excellent results of the various games like Assassin’s Creed Odyssey or Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six Siege. The latter registers for example more than 55 million players. We also learn that the latter spend more and play more of the brand’s games. The company therefore reports that a new peak in revenue per day and per record player has just been established and that players spent more than 4.5 billion hours on the year 2019, all platforms combined, against 2, 0 billion in 2016, which marks an increase of more than 50% over 4 years.
If the current year is far below our initial expectations, the third fiscal quarter was marked by the excellent performance of several titles in our back-catalog, including Rainbow Six Siege, Assassin’s Creed Odyssey, The Crew 2, Mario + Rabbids Kingdom Battle, and the launch of Just Dance 2020, which is back on the path to growth. The stability, at a high level, of the number of active players on consoles and PC testifies to the depth of our portfolio of games and the greater resilience of our model. Yves Guillemot, President and CEO of Ubisoft
Indeed, Just Dance 2020 proves to be a great success compared to its predecessor even if the figures are not specified in the financial results. Uplay, for its part, recorded very strong revenue growth with turnover increasing by more than 70% over the last nine months of 2019-20.
But Ubisoft does not intend to look back forever. The French firm reassures players by highlighting its future catalog of games. During 2020-2021, the studio will offer five major titles including Watch Dogs Legion, Gods & monsters and Rainbow Six Quarantine.
For several months, we have been evolving our organization to ensure a reinforced focus on titles with high potential and we are enthusiastic about the idea of launching 5 AAAs games on 2020-21. While the competitive environment should be particularly strong, our productions are progressing well and our games each come with strong elements of differentiation. We will also be launching other very innovative titles with a strong emphasis on social interactions, such as Roller Champions.
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Through JeromeJoffard, Editing jeuxvideo.com
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