Ubisoft Announces On-Track Results, Despite Slight Drop

French-headquartered publisher and developer Ubisoft has announced its sales for the first quarter of its 2005-2006 fiscal year. Revenue for the quarter ending June 30, 2005 was 43 million euros ($52 million), down 29 percent from the same quarter in 2004, but in line with Ubisoft's target of 42 million euros ($51 million). The company's financial release, which did not explicitly state the company's overall profit or loss for the quarter, noted that some of Ubisoft's major game titles, particularly including Rainbox Six Lockdown would arrive in the second fiscal quarter of 2005-2006. Therefore, it predicted sales for the first half of the year expected to reach 155 million euros ($188 million), a more than 20% increase over the previous year. Ubisoft noted that its main title launched during the quarter was Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith for the Nintendo DS and Game Boy Advance, which sold 565,000 units worldwide in its first two months of release. The company is now the #1 independent publisher of DS titles in the U.S., France, the UK, and Canada, according to its release. In staffing news, Ubisoft's Quebec studio, whose creation was announced in April 2005, has already recruited 45 employees. In total, studio headcount rose by 170 during the quarter to 2,400 as of June 30, 2005, and the company still plans to add 600 new employees during the current fiscal year. Finally, Ubisoft has revised upward its profit target for the fiscal year 2005-2006 by 8 million euros ($9.7 million) to 38 million euros ($46 million), largely due to its sale of 5.155 million shares in its mobile game offshoot Gameloft, which netted the company 12.2 million euros ($15 million).