FILE PHOTO: The UbiSoft Entertainment logo is seen at the Paris Games Week (PGW), a trade fair for video games in Paris, France, October 29, 2019. REUTERS/Benoit Tessier/File Photo
Paris: After years of turbulence that saw several top executives out the door, Ubisoft is betting aggressively on Assassin’s Creed Mirage to level up profits for the French publisher, with a steadier line-up of new releases.
The latest entry in the wildly popular Assassin franchise was released last Thursday, to be followed in December by a game based on the hit Avatar films – which was originally scheduled to hit shelves a year ago.
Attesting to its optimism, Ubisoft expects strong revenue growth this year after a string of lacklustre results.
“For the past four or five years, the company has disappointed enormously because it has postponed a lot of its new games,” said Charles-Louis Planade, an industry analyst at Midcap Partners. But he now expects regular releases from a catalogue that includes top sellers like Rabbids and Just Dance.These new games “are clearly going to improve the company’s financial health, and get back to being the Ubisoft we knew a few years ago”, Planade said.
Taking no chances, the group is launching Mirage, set in ninth-century Baghdad, at ¤50 instead of the ¤70 often set for new titles.
A successful launch would be a welcome end to a year that began with a rare strike in the video game sector, with two Ubisoft unions protesting management practices.
Allegations of pervasive sexism, discrimination and harassment in Ubisoft offices worldwide first emerged in 2020, leading to the firing or exits of executives including its creative director.
CEO Yves Guillemot filled in temporarily until insider Igor Monceau was tapped for the job in September 2021, but recovering from the disruptions would take months, including a revamp of its human resources department.
Development of the long-awaited Skull and Bones is a case in point: originally expected for 2018, it has yet to see the light of day.
But 2023 has seen a series of developments in Ubisoft’s favour.
In August it signed a deal with Activision Blizzard, the target of a takeover bid by Microsoft, that would give it the cloud gaming rights for Activision games for the next 15 years.
With cloud gaming, players can stream a title from platforms like Netflix, without having to buy a traditional console and game cartridge.
The deal is expected to get approval from UK competition authorities soon, and would give Ubisoft cloud rights to a catalogue including the wildly successful Call of Duty and Candy Crush games.
“We strongly believe in the next five to 10 years, many games will be streamed and will also be produced in the cloud,” Guillemot told The Financial Times in September. “That’s what pushed us to go forward with the deal.”
The cleared horizon has helped Ubisoft stock climb around 13% since the start of the year, despite a profit warning in January that sent shares tumbling to levels not seen since 2016.
Despite a market value of nearly ¤4bil, it remains one of the smaller publishers as mergers and takeovers swirl, but for the moment the Guillemot family appears well in control, after sealing an alliance with Chinese giant Tencent that gives it a 10% Ubisoft stake. — AFP
