Ubisoft has been having a pretty good past few years. Not only did they invest time and money into older games like Rainbow Six Siege and For Honor, but they also backed off the whole “annual Assassin’s Creed” thing this year, riding Odyssey into 2019 (the last DLC for it was released just this week). And even if they didn’t, Origins and Odyssey aren’t a bad 2017 and 2018 respective duo.
So how well are they doing? Ubisoft is reporting “higher than expected” performance based on their most recent fiscal report this week, due in part to the continued success of Odyssey and Siege. Ubisoft says that the former has had “very sharp increase in daily engagement, PRI and sellthrough compared with Assassin’s Creed Origins in the first quarter,” which was already a success.
As for Siege, the publisher notes that it’s “one of the industry’s top ten best-selling titles over the last five years,” with engagement up “year after year,” which led to a deal with Neowiz to bring the game to PC bangs (LAN cafes) in South Korea. Ubisoft also confirms that The Division 2 is “the industry’s biggest hit since the beginning of the year (it clarifies this stat as “units sold between January and June 2019, citing the NPD, GSD, Famitsu, and others as sources),” and things are looking good for Ghost Recon: Breakpoint, Watch Dogs: Legion, and Roller Champions, which all had their own mostly investor-pleasing milestones at E3 (“best sentiment score,” “65 awards and nominations,” and “most-streamed game at E3” respectively).
So where is Ubisoft going from here? Well they’re going to continue to support their live service games like Siege, and move on to new ones soon enough. The aforementioned Breakpoint will likely take over for the more polarizing Wildlands, Just Dance 2020 is poised to make a splash again (and is even getting a Wii release), and 2020 will bring Gods and Monsters, Roller Champions, Rainbow Six Quarantine (that zombie game), and Watch Dogs: Legion into the forefront.
Everything on that list outside of the unproven Roller Champions sounds good on paper, and as long as Ubisoft keeps older games alive and paces themselves with storied franchises, they’ll likely continue down this positive path.
Ubisoft First-Quarter 2019-20 Sales [Ubisoft]
Source: Destructoid Ubisoft says it hit ‘higher than expected’ sales goals this year thanks to Assassin’s Creed and Rainbow Six Siege