Ubisoft Announces Better than Expected Sales, Still Posts Loss

French video game publisher Ubisoft has reported a loss for the second fiscal quarter of the year, with overall sales coming in at 248.5 million Euro (the equivalent of 342.6 million dollars), which is 30 percent more than the company expected to get for the period but still 5% less than the figure posted for the same period of 2010.

The losses amounted to 37.1 million Euo (51.1 million dollars) and were less than half those posted in 2010 for the same quarter.

Ubisoft says that the biggest performer for the three month period were the Facebook based The Smurfs and Co. and the home console and PC powered Driver: San Francisco, the racing game that featured a soul shifting mechanic.

Other good sellers for the period were The Settlers Online and Trackmania 2: Canyon, while titles from the back catalog, like Michael Jackson: The Experience and the various entries in the Assassin's Creed series were also very good, with an increase from 107 to 147 million Euro when compared to 2010.

Overall the Assassin's Creed franchise has managed to sell more than 31 million copies since it was introduced while the Ghost Recon games total 18 million and Rayman, without the current Raving Rabbids spin-offs, can count to 19 million in sales.

Looking forward Ubisoft says that it expects to see very good sales for the recently released Just Dance 3, which offers fans of the series new routines and new songs.

The star of the coming quarter will undoubtedly be Assassin's Creed: Revelations, which will be out soon and will take Ezio to Constantinople, on the footsteps of his ancestor Altair.

Full year revenue targets for Ubisoft are set at 1.05 billion Euro (1.43 billion dollars) and the company also estimates that it will turn a profit before the end of the fiscal year on March 31, 2012.