PC and PS4 Share the Top of Ubisoft’s Quarterly Sales; Financial Results Announced

Today Ubisoft announced its financial results for the third quarter of the fiscal year 2019-20, related to the period between October 1 and December 31.

Below you can see a handy table with a summary of the publisher’s results for the first three quarters of the fiscal year.

As you can easily notice, they show decline due to the lack of major releases.

CEO Yves Guillemot provided a comment explaining the quarterly performance. He admitted that the current fiscal year is going well below expectations due to the delays announced in October, but older titles like Rainbow Six Siege, Assassin’s Creed Odyssey, The Crew 2 and Mario + Rabbids Kingdom Battle recorded “excellent performances.”

“Although the current fiscal year is well below our initial expectations, the third fiscal quarter saw excellent performances from several titles in our back catalog – particularly Rainbow Six Siege, Assassin’s Creed Odyssey, The Crew 2 and Mario + Rabbids Kingdom Battle – and from the release of Just Dance 2020, which is back on the growth track. The fact that our number of active players, MAUs and PRI on consoles and PC have remained stable year on year at high levels clearly demonstrates the depth of our game’s portfolio and the firmer resilience of our business model.

We have evolved our organizational structure in recent months in order to strengthen our focus on high-potential titles, and we are very excited about the idea of releasing five new AAA games in 2020-21.

Although the competitive environment is looking especially tough, production of these games is progressing well and each of them comes with great features that set them apart. We also will be releasing other very innovative titles that have a particular focus on social interaction,
such as Roller Champions.

Over the past ten years, the Group has radically transformed itself and delivered significant return on its investment. We achieved this by overhauling our portfolio, with a strong presence now in multiplayer games, esports and RPGs. By undertaking a deep-seated digital transformation, with an explosion in player engagement and PRI. By developing our expertise and infrastructure so as to offer best-in-class live experiences. By ramping up Uplay, which is now our fourth-leading digital platform in terms of sales. By releasing five profitable new brands and owning all of our franchises.

And by delivering a powerful comeback for Assassin’s Creed, sustained growth for Far Cry and incredible success for Rainbow Six Siege – a best seller and one of the greatest esports games of the past five years. As a result, the number of hours played on our PC and console games increased from 2 billion in 2016 to 4.5 billion in 2019.

These outstanding achievements – the vast majority of which were internally driven thanks, notably, to our strong corporate culture – prove that we have got our strategy right and have enabled us to create major value for our players, employees, and shareholders. The adjustments
that we are currently implementing will allow us to pursue this strategy going forward by continuing to create high-quality experiences and develop direct relationships with our player communities as well as seizing the numerous growth opportunities the industry has to offer.”

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

We learn that Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six Siege has reached 55 million registered players, while Assassin’s Creed Odyssey beat Origins’ sell-through by 50%.

Just Dance 2020 also improved “sharply” compared to its predecessor, while revenue for Uplay grew 73% year-on-year.

• Robust activity on both PC and consoles:
  • 4.5 billion hours played in calendar 2019 vs. 2.0 billion in 2016
  • Stable high levels of active players, MAUs2 and PRI1 in the third fiscal quarter compared with the same period of 2018-19
• Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six Siege:
  • Over 55 million registered players
  • Record-high MAUs² for a month of December
  • Acceleration of PRI1 growth in the third fiscal quarter
    • New peak in DARPU²
  • Ranked 7th most impactful PC game by The Esports Observer (calendar Q3 2019)
• Assassin’s Creed Odyssey: steep rises in the first nine months of 2019-20 for sellthrough, daily engagement and PRI1, up by some 50%, 60% and 140% respectively compared with Assassin’s Creed® Origins
• Just Dance 2020: sell-through up sharply compared with Just Dance 2019
• Very strong growth for Uplay: revenue up 73% in the first nine months of 2019-20
• Full-year targets for 2019-20 and 2020-21 confirmed

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

As you can see, PC and PS4 share the top for the quarter, with PC slightly ahead by 1%. PS4 has the top by 4% for the first nine months of the fiscal year.

Nintendo Switch and Xbox One share the same percentage for the quarter at 15% each, while Microsoft’s console is still well ahead of Nintendo’s for the past nine months.

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

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