Ubisoft released its sales and earnings figures for fiscal 2019-20, which is the twelve months ended 31 March 2020.The company has offered an update about the ‘Play Your Part, Play At Home’ initiative that was introduced to encourage players to stay at home. Under this initiative, Ubisoft was giving away three PC games including Rayman Legends, Child of Light, and Assassin’s Creed II, which were downloaded nine million times.
Ubisoft is also offering Discovery Tours in Assassin’s Creed Origins and Assassin’s Creed Odyssey as well as Rabbids Coding for free. The company has revealed that teachers are using these Discovery Tours to give virtual history lessons to their students and Rabbids Coding to teach programming.
Ubisoft co-founder and CEO Yves Guillemot, said “In this unprecedented period, our priority has been to ensure the safety and well-being of our teams, everywhere in the world. They have shown incredible courage, commitment, adaptability and professionalism, which I would like to salute. Supported by the remote working tools that we have put in place, they have been able to continue offering exceptional games and services so that players can escape, explore and have fun with their families, friends and communities. Our mission is to enrich players’ lives through memorable gaming experiences, and it is more relevant now than ever before.”
Ubisoft Chief Financial Officer Frédérick Duguet, continued “As expected, our financial results for the full year finished well below our initial expectations. However, it is important to note our strong fourth-quarter performance. Starting mid-March, the lockdown led to a sharp increase in player engagement worldwide, but even at the beginning of the fourth quarter our operating trends already were higher than expected thanks to our teams’ remarkable execution. The intense levels of activity for our games, in terms of both Live content and esports events, combined with highly effective acquisition strategies helped several of our titles to be remarkably successful. This is the case for Rainbow Six Siege, Assassin’s Creed Odyssey, The Division 2, and Just Dance 2020. We are also encouraged to see players’ excellent response to our latest updates to Ghost Recon Breakpoint.”
- Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six Siege:
- 60 million registered players
- More than one billion session days in 2019-20, representing a sharp increase
- Record engagement levels for January, February and March months and a 26 per cent rise in PRI over the quarter
- Ranked the fourth “Most Impactful PC Game” by The Esports Observer for the first calendar quarter of 2020
- Assassin’s Creed Odyssey: Very sharp increases over past the twelve months in sell-through, daily player engagement and PRI, up by approximately 90 per cent, 90 per cent, and 170 per cent respectively compared with Assassin’s Creed Origins.
- Tom Clancy’s The Division 2: Very strong recovery in Q4, with net bookings comparable to those for Assassin’s Creed Odyssey after 13 months.
- Just Dance 2020: net bookings up 156 per cent in Q4 compared with Just Dance 2019.
- 11 titles have sold over 10 million units2 in this console cycle, demonstrating the depth and strength of the Group’s portfolio: Assassin’s Creed Unity, Assassin’s Creed Origins, Assassin’s Creed Odyssey, The Division, The Division 2, Far Cry 4, Far Cry 5, Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon Wildlands, Rainbow Six Siege, Watch Dogs , Watch Dogs 2