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Despite an unexpectedly competitive couple of months, Ubisoft says its properties performed well during the first half of its 2018-19 fiscal year.

Alissa McAloon, Publisher

October 30, 2018

2 Min Read

Ubisoft has closed out the first half of its 2018-19 fiscal year with both sales and player recurring investment on the rise, announcing in its quarterly report that it has so far seen €767.0 million (~$869.9 million) in sales and €262.0 million (~$297.1 million) in net bookings from player recurring investment this year.

Digital net bookings, or digital sales minus income from deferred services, also rose up by roughly 51 percent year-over-year to €519.2 million (~$588.8 million), though digital notably claimed only 69.6 percent of overall net bookings versus last year’s 73.5 percent. 

This most recent quarter saw the release of Assassin’s Creed Odyssey, a release that Ubisoft notes in a conference call came earlier than it had originally planned to give it some breathing room in the wake of Rockstar’s late-October Red Dead Redemption 2 release. For Assassin’s Creed Odyssey, Ubisoft notes as well that 45 percent of the game’s total sales came from digital download, a 10 percent jump from the series’ previous release.

All in all, the company says this October came with more competition -- competition it usually expects to see in November --but, despite this, it still saw a year-over-year increase in monthly active users overall. 

“Led by an increasingly direct relationship with our player communities as well as very high-quality titles, our first-half 2018-19 performance confirms the potential of Ubisoft’s many short- and medium-term growth drivers,” said CEO Yves Guillemot in a press release. “The steady rise in player engagement is feeding our digital development and the quality of our games is enabling us to achieve top-rate performance.”

As with past reports, Ubisoft says that its back catalog games continued to perform well, with net bookings for those previous releases rising by 48.8 percent year-over-year to €564.9 million (~$640.7 million) for the first half of the 2018-19 fiscal year.

About the Author(s)

Alissa McAloon

Publisher, GameDeveloper.com

As the Publisher of Game Developer, Alissa McAloon brings a decade of experience in the video game industry and media. When not working in the world of B2B game journalism, Alissa enjoys spending her time in the worlds of immersive sandbox games or dabbling in the occasional TTRPG.

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