Ubi game sales down by more than half

By Ellie Gibson Published 5 November, 2009

But things are looking up, says bossman.

Ubisoft has published a financial report for the six months ending 30th September, revealing it sold less than half the number of games compared to last year.

Sales fell 51.7 per cent to reach £149 million / €166 million. Operating loss is likely to stand at £72 million / €80 million.

But everything's going to be all right, according to CEO Yves Guillemot. The company should still hit €1 billion sales for the full year as the next six months are set to be "significantly more favourable, with a strong return to growth and profitability".

Games released in the first half of the year include Call of Juarez: Bound in Blood, with 900,000 units sold. "As expected, in the first half of fiscal 2009-10 the market was very difficult both for Nintendo DS games and for our back-catalogue titles, with few new releases," said the Ubi boss.

But the schedule for the rest of the perido is looking hot, reckons Guillemot, with Assassin's Creed II, Avatar, Your Shape, Just Dance, Shaun White and Rabbids Go Home due in time for Christmas. Then next year there's Splinter Cell Conviction, Red Steel 2 and Ruse to look forward to.

"Finally, thanks to the investments we have made in recent years to develop our creative workforce, we will be launching numerous initiatives and innovations in the short and medium-term in all segments of the industry, both for current and future consoles and for on-line games," Guillemot said.

The full banana can be found over on GamesIndustry.biz.

Picture of Ellie.

About Ellie Gibson

Since joining Eurogamer in the mid 2000s, Ellie has written about subjects as diverse as the fall of Gizmondo, the rise of Hollyoaks actresses in Red Alert games and the noise a bear makes under NSFW circumstances.

Read more articles from Ellie by visiting the Ellie Gibson archive page.

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Comments (19) Latest comment 2 years ago

Comments threads automatically close after 30 days, but please feel free to continue chatting on the forum!

  • bad09 #1 2 years ago

    Make 'em cheaper I'll buy more. Simples.

  • DAN.E.B #2 2 years ago

    No real suprises there!
    quality had been dropping at a similar rate
    they will wake up and realize it at some point
    like EA did!

  • Negotiator #3 2 years ago

    Banking on AC2 me thinks, you got my money Ubi, Ubi one are you there, your my only hope.
    Edited by 1 at 05/11/09 @ 09:07

  • IkariW #4 2 years ago

    My heart bleeds for them it really does.....

    Carry on giving us good games and you'll carry on making money, its pretty much that simple. And to be fair, they usually do a pretty good job of that.

    I'm especially looking forward to "Shaun White and Rabbids Go Home" I think the mix of extreme 'Dude' snowboarding and comedy Rabbits has potential to be a sure fire Christmas Number 1! Oh? thats not what it looked like? oh... :( ahhhh if only.....maybe next year....

    :)
    Ikari

  • FooAtari #5 2 years ago

    Well that's what you get for releasing crap ass sequels such as Vegas 2 which was little more than an expansion pack for the first game.

  • Spanky #6 2 years ago

    Stevas Wins!

    Fuck you Ubi-Doobi

  • Darren #7 2 years ago

    Other than the fairly decent Call of Juarez: Bound in Blood, which they only published anyway, I'm struggling to recall a decent Ubi Soft game from the last twelve months. Has there been one?

    Usually whenever I see their horrid purple logo and hear that annoying jingle during the game's intro sequence, I think oh-uh because that means in nine times out of ten cases the game will have their in-house trademark, namely ugly screen tearing, nevermind bugs and other issues they never bother fixing. Ubi Soft are not a great publisher anyway IMO - I can't even say I'm excited about Assassin's Creed 2 as the first game wasn't that great - so this 50% drop in sales will hopefully act as a wake up call for them.

  • davisorle #8 2 years ago

    Wasnt it Ubi saying that they will be spreading and they delay their titles cause they had been, so far, releasing all their "great" titles in short periods after the other and they wouldnt make as much? Didn't work out as they hoped so huh? I think their wallets got a bit butthurt this year. I dont think they will be attempting this any time soon again.

    So move your asses already and give me Conviction and such cause i need something exciting. Well Dragon age is sweet but not exciting :)

  • penhalion #9 2 years ago

    Recently they have managed to screw up Prince of Persia by replacing the guy who made it great with a pretender who thought that gamers wanted a game where they required zero skill to play or complete it. Then they pull and re-write splinter cell conviction, before going back to their original concept after people hated the re-write. Making red steel 2, when red steel 1 was lousy?!? Assasins creed 2 is shaping up to be another all graphics, no trousers offering (anyone who played it at the expo knows what I mean). I truly fear for their survival if this kind of management keeps up!

  • Lebowski #10 2 years ago

    They should have loved and respected the Ghost Recon franchise better IMO.

  • GamesConnoisseur #11 2 years ago

    Ubi is not so gamer friendly, they are one company who are still ignoring in majority the idea of adding subtitles for hard of hearing or Deaf gamers worldwide. There are a lot of us and Capcom had added option in RE5 for a first in their series but Ubi?!

    Which is why I m not remotely excited about AC2.

    Consider your gaming audience more carefully... your sales will looks after itself.

  • SliderNL #12 2 years ago

    the problem with ubisoft is they relied on the sales of LOADS of Crappy DS-kidsgame which mommy and daddy are downloading to their R4 cards. Shaun White was rubbisch

  • Eldritch #13 2 years ago

    Where are the Ubisoft games based on Blue Byte franchises such as Incubation, Battle Isle or Great Courts? Where's the Settlers game for 360 and/or PS3?

  • MaxHughes #14 2 years ago

    It's all those "Imagine" games on DS that are bringing the sales down!!

  • HenryFitz #15 2 years ago

    I bought three of their games last year, so I feel no guilt.

    Prince of Persia was perhaps a bit too easy, but the no-death mechanic was a good idea, and much better implemented than Bioshock's Vita-Chambers. At least in POP, the villains went back to full health when you were saved by Elika.

  • BadBoyBonner #16 2 years ago

    Is Ellie struggling to spell because she is on her perido?

  • CUTZ-SIX #17 2 years ago

    Maybe if they made better games and listened to the fans (tom clancy series) and didnt rely on franchise names alone they would sell better.
    Fact is there are better games from other publishers out there by far, so yeah, like above poster said: Do like EA and start making better games.

  • Ced_Flanders #18 2 years ago

    I miss the days when Ubi stood for quality... The original Splinter Cell, Prince of Persia: Sands of Time, Beyond Good & Evil... those were the days

  • darkphoenix #19 2 years ago

    Far Cry 2 = best FPS of this generation.

    Prince of Persia = great plattformer, a welcome change from combat-focused 128bit trilogy

    Assassin's Creed = another great and deeply ground-breaking action game that paved the way for a whole generation

    3 easy picks for "great, recent games from Ubisoft".
    Easily better than.... let's say Konami, Capcom, Namco, Eidos, Square-Enix, SEGA, ....