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Ubisoft Touts Strong Performance & New IP
Ubisoft continues to perform well, with the announcements during its financial year-end call that digital sales have increased from last year, and back-catalog sales and re-occurring game investment from players continues to be strong.
Digital revenue of €729.3 million represents 50 percent of total sales, back catalog sales (€649.2 million) is 44.5 percent of total sales, and with the growth of the Ghost Recon community by almost 150 percent in under 18 months, things are going so well for the company that it is increasing its outlook for the future in these categories.
In particular, Ubisoft said that Wildlands was the industry's best-selling title since the beginning of the year, and For Honor was the industry's second best-selling game.
This success has spurred the company to announce a new IP – a multiplayer-focused title with a "strong live operation" according to CFO Alain Martinez that's planned for fiscal year 2018/2019 (ending March 2019). Ubisoft says it's moving back this title because it doesn't want to rush it out to market and possibly split the market of players enjoying existing and upcoming games.
Speaking of those coming games, the new Assassin's Creed (Ubisoft won't commit as to whether the series is going annual again), The Crew 2, Far Cry 5, and South Park: The Fractured But Whole will come out before March 2018, and there are is also an unannounced Switch title alongside those already announced for Nintendo's system.
Little mention was made by the looming takeover by Vivendi, although Ubisoft CEO and president Yves Guillemot made a call for shareholders to support Ubi's independence.
[Source: Ubisoft]
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