Ubi game sales down by more than half News
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by
Ellie Gibson
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.
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Comments: 1-21 of 21 in total
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Negotiator
05/11/09 @ 09:06
+2
Banking on AC2 me thinks, you got my money Ubi, Ubi one are you there, your my only hope.
Edited 1 times,
most recently on 05/11/09 @ 09:07
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0
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 |
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+3
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. |
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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 :) |
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+1
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!
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GamesConnoisseur
05/11/09 @ 10:58
+2
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. |
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Ced_Flanders
05/11/09 @ 15:25
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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
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darkphoenix
05/11/09 @ 16:40
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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, .... |
Comments: 1-21 of 21 in total
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