What just happened? Ubisoft has released its full-year 2018-2019 earnings figures, which saw record profitability and net bookings of more than €2.03 billion ($2.27 billion). It also revealed a few interesting facts about some of its biggest games.
While The Division 2 was Ubisoft's biggest game release in the fourth quarter, it never sold as well on the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One as expected, though it has "record highs for engagement per player," and strong season pass sales. Ubisoft's chief financial officer, Frederick Duguet, said the missed targets were "in large part due to more competitive environment than expected," but he does predict it to "grow and gain traction" as new game content is released.
On the PC, The Division 2's sales were in line with the first game's "massive launch," and sold ten times better on the company's Uplay service compared to its predecessor. It was also noted that Division 2 preorders on Uplay were six times higher than for The Division 1. All this was no doubt helped by the game skipping Steam in favor of the Epic Games Store and Ubisoft's own online storefront.
Rainbow Six Siege keeps on pulling in the players, despite being released in December 2015. It saw a 40 percent year-on-year increase in the player base, which is now above 45 million. Assassin's Creed Odyssey, meanwhile, saw record engagement for the franchise, while PC net bookings were up 78.7 percent.
One of the more surprising statistics involved Far Cry 5. While I mostly enjoyed it, not everyone was a fan of the open-world FPS, but it's still become the best-selling Ubisoft game on the current generation of consoles.
Looking forward, Ubisoft is set to release three new AAA titles in the fourth fiscal quarter (January 1 - March 31, 2020), one of which is likely to be a London-set Watch Dogs 3. We might also see a new Splinter Cell game.