Ubisoft Boasts “Most Ambitious Line-up of The Industry;” PS4 Tops the Publisher’s Fiscal Year Sales

Today Ubisoft announced its financial results for the the fiscal year 2019-20, related to the period between April 1, 2019 and March 31, 2020.

Below you can see a handy table with a summary of the publisher’s results.

CEO Yves Guillemot provided a comment explaining the quarterly performance. Interestingly, he mentions the possibility to delay an AAA game to the next fiscal year (between April 2021 and March 2022) “if it ensures to maximize the long-term potential” of the line-up.

“In this unprecedented period, our priority has been to ensure the safety and well-being of our teams, everywhere in the world. They have shown incredible courage, commitment, adaptability and professionalism, which I would like to salute. Supported by the remote working tools that we have put in place, they have been able to continue offering exceptional games and services so that players can escape, explore and have fun with their families, friends and communities. Our mission is to enrich players’ lives through memorable gaming experiences, and it is more relevant now than ever before.”

“Our initial targets for 2020-21 remain in sight as we are currently benefiting from excellent momentum, especially with stronger than anticipated performance in back catalog, digital and PRI, coupled with the most ambitious line-up of the industry for the year.

However, the COVID-19 crisis calls for prudence, as numerous uncertainties have arisen. The transition to working from home has had short-term repercussions on our production, for the time being limited to few weeks. The coming months will provide more visibility on whether we can maintain our release plans. Additionally, it is unclear what effects the economic crisis is going to have on the operating conditions of our business partners and on consumer spending.

For the sake of transparency and in order to reflect the potential impact of those external uncertainties, we have decided to supplement our targets with a range. The bottom range presents our estimate of the impact that these external factors could have if they were to actually materialize.

It notably reflects the possibility that we decide to postpone the release of a AAA title to 2021-22, if it ensures to maximize the long-term potential of our line-up.”

“We continue to draw on our solid financial structure, our increasingly recurring profile and the numerous assets we have built up over the past few years. These achievements have enabled us to radically transform the Group and create major value for our players, employees, partners and shareholders. As we enter this new console cycle, our creative and production capacity, franchise portfolio and Live operations capabilities are all significantly stronger. Going forward, we intend to continue pursuing our strategy in order to seize the many opportunities to grow our top line and increase our profitability, notably thanks to the acceleration trends towards digital and social.”

Chief Financial Officer Frédérick Duguet also commented:

“As expected, our financial results for the full year finished well below our initial expectations. However, it is important to note our strong fourth quarter performance. Starting mid-March, the lockdown led to a sharp increase in player engagement worldwide, but even at the beginning of the fourth quarter our operating trends already were higher than expected thanks to our teams’ remarkable execution. The intense levels of activity for our games, in terms of both Live content and esports events, combined with highly effective acquisition strategies helped several of our titles to be remarkably successful. This is the case for Rainbow Six Siege, Assassin’s Creed Odyssey, The Division 2, and Just Dance 2020. We are also encouraged to see players’ excellent response to our latest updates to Ghost Recon
Breakpoint.”

On top of that, we take a look at some highlights for the company’s quarterly achievements.

• Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six® Siege:
  • 60 million registered players
  •  More than one billion session days in 2019-20, representing a sharp increase
  • Record engagement levels for January, February and March months and a 26% rise in PRI over the quarter
  • Ranked the fourth “Most Impactful PC Game” by The Esports Observer for the first calendar quarter of 2020
• Assassin’s Creed Odyssey: Very sharp increases over past the twelve months in sellthrough, daily player engagement and PRI, up by approximately 90%, 90%, and 170%
  respectively compared with Assassin’s Creed® Origins.
• Tom Clancy’s The Division 2: Very strong recovery in Q4, with net bookings comparable to those for Assassin’s Creed Odyssey after 13 months.
• Just Dance® 2020: net bookings up 156% in Q4 compared with Just Dance 2019.
• 11 titles have sold over 10 million units in this console cycle, demonstrating thedepth and strength of the Group’s portfolio: Assassin’s Creed Unity – Assassin’s Creed Origins – Assassin’s Creed Odyssey – The Division – The Division 2 – Far Cry® 4 – Far Cry 5 -Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon® Wildlands – Rainbow Six Siege – Watch_Dogs® – Watch_Dogs 2
•  2020-21 targets updated to reflect the potential impact of COVID19:
  Expected net bookings of between €2,3501 million and €2,6501 million and non-IFRS operating income of between €400 million and €600 million

As usual, we get a detailed breakdown of net bookings by region and platform.

The PS4  is at the top of sales for the whole fiscal year, followed by PC, XBox One, Mobile, and Switch at the bottom. For the latest quarter results are simular but PS4 and PC share the top.

Last, but not least, below you can see the slate of releases by Ubisoft for the current fiscal year.

The publisher boast “the most ambitious line-up of the industry” with Assassin’s Creed Valhalla, Watch Dogs Legion, Rainbow Six Quarantine, Gods & Monsters, and another unannounced AAA game from one of Ubisoft’s biggest franchises.

Three of these games are slated for the third quarter of the fiscal year (October-December) and two in the fourth (January-March 2021).

If you want to compare, you can check out the results related to the past quarter, which were published in February.