Ubisoft Boasts “Strongest Quarter” in Its History as PS5 & PS4 Dominate the Publisher’s Sales

Today Ubisoft announced its financial results for the third quarter of the fiscal year 2020-21, related to the period between Oct. 1, 2020, and Dec. 31, 2020.

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

As usual, CEO Yves Guillemot provided a comment on the company’s quarterly performance, boasting about the strongest quarter in the publisher’s history.

“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. 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.”

“Ubisoft’s model is mostly based on internally-created, wholly-owned IP and assets. It is a tried and tested model that has enabled us to build one of the broadest and most diversified portfolios of successful franchises and remarkable shareholder value.

The benefits and opportunities offered by this strategy are growing in a context of strongly rising video game brands value and of AAA quality asset scarcity due to higher barriers to entry. This virtuous momentum confirms our confidence in our ability to carry on generating strong value for our teams, our players and our shareholders over the long term.”

Chief financial officer Frédérick Duguet also commented:

“The quarter was marked by the success of Just Dance 2021 and excellent reviews for Immortal Fenix Rising and Assassin’s Creed Valhalla.
The latter delivered record sales and ranked, with Watch Dogs: Legion, among the top four best sellers on the new generation consoles. Our back-catalog also turned in a remarkable performance, with record momentum for our Assassin’s Creed titles, solid growth of the Far Cry franchise and strong increase in engagement and revenues for the The Crew brand and our Freeto-Play game Brawlhalla.

We’re also reaping the benefits of the Switch’s huge success and our
position as leading third-party publisher on the platform thanks to, among others, our Just Dance games and Mario + Rabbids: Kingdom Battle. The depth and breadth of our catalog, which goes beyond the brands mentioned, provides us with ever-greater visibility and continues to be a strong driver of profitability.”

On top of that, the press released includes a list of highlights for the company’s quarterly achievements.

Ubisoft claims to be the leading publisher in 2020 in terms of overall units sales and second-ranked for PS5 and Xbox Series X|S sales. They’re also the top third-party publisher for Nintendo Switch sales and Assassin’s Creed Valhalla enjoyed record revenue for the franchise.

• The leading publisher in terms of unit sales on all platforms combined in 2020
• New-generation (Playstation 5, Xbox Series X/S): Ubisoft ranked second-leading publisher – with Assassin’s Creed Valhalla, Watch Dogs: Legion, and Immortals Fenyx Rising all in the top 7 best sellers.
• Switch : Ubisoft top third-party publisher in 2020, with Just Dance 2020 the 8th best seller
• Record number of unique players in a quarter
• Assassin’s Creed Valhalla: Record revenue for the franchise
• Just Dance 2021: Net bookings up sharply compared with Just Dance 2020
• Continued strong momentum for the back-catalog in the quarter:
  • Robust growth for Brawlhalla, Mario + Rabbids Kingdom Battle, Far Cry 5, The Crew 2 and Anno 1800
  • A more than 200% surge for Just Dance back-catalog
  • Steep rise in player engagement for Assassin’s Creed Odyssey and Assassin’s Creed Origins
  • Solid acquisition for Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six Siege, with some 70 million players registered since its launch
• Targets tightened for 2020-21: Net bookings of between €2,220m and €2,280m and nonIFRS operating income of between €450m and €500m
• Ubisoft ESG commitment rewarded with “Prime” status by ISS ESG

Below we see a breakdown of sales by platforms and region, and the release slate for the 4th quarter.

PS5 and PS4 are at the top of Ubisoft’s sales both for the past quarter and the first nine months of the fiscal year, followed by Xbox platforms and PC (the former is second in the quarter while the latter is second for the nine months) and Nintendo Switch pretty far behind.

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