Prince of Persia Is Very Important to Ubisoft

The recently released new Prince of Persia, which marks the series’ leaving the familiar Sands of Time setting, could be one of the most important videogames in the history of Ubisoft.

Alain Martinez, who is the Chief Financial Officer of Ubisoft, stated, at the UBS Annual Global Media Conference, that Prince of Persia would probably go over 4 million copies sold. He added that “If it goes to four or five then there is an upside factor for the company. If it goes to 1.5 million, then there is a downside factor”.

Ubisoft is pretty much hunting a top title, one that could hold the top position in the sales charts for more than one week. Both Activision Blizzard and Electronic Arts have had such titles during this holiday launch season but Ubisoft has lacked one so far.

Far Cry 2, developed by Ubisoft Montreal, was initially promoted as an AAA title that should have attracted a lot of gamers on release. Because of mixed initial reviews, the game seems to be doing worse than expected and the France based publisher is now hoping that Far Cry 2 will prove one of those games that sells at a steady pace over a longer period of time.

The company estimates that between 2.5 and 3 million copies will be sold over the life time of the title. Martinez has pointed out that Ubisoft titles tend to become hits in the long term even if their critical reception is not too warm, as exemplified by Assassin’s Creed, which sold over 5 million copies, while only slightly going over 80 in Metacritic ratings.

The CFO also revealed that Ubisoft had tried to buy Cryptic Studios, which ended up being taken over by Atari. Other acquisition plans are being looked over at the French company and one or two of them could be finalized and announced shortly.