14 DAY TRIAL // It seems that the worldwide economic downturn has hit French publisher Ubisoft particularly hard, leading to a big drop in overall sales, to about 1.08 billion dollars, with the overall loss standing at 53 million. The company is saying that it aims to return to profitability during the current fiscal year, which started on April 1, with a strong launch line up coming in the fall and at the beginning of 2011.
Yves Guillemot, who is the chief executive officer of Ubisoft, has stated, “The global economic crisis had a pronounced impact on the video game industry in 2009, which contracted by nearly 10 percent year-on-year. Ubisoft’s sales were hit particularly hard, falling 18 percent over the full year despite a stabilization in the second half of the year, when figures came in on a par with the corresponding period of 2008-09”.
The big performers for Ubisoft were Just Dance for the Nintendo Wii, a casual oriented title which uses popular pop hits and easy to understand mechanics to draw in customers, which managed to move 2 million copies to brick and mortar stores, and Assassin's Creed II, which launched in the fall of 2009 and managed to top 9 million units sold worldwide. Ubisoft is also satisfied with the performance of Red Steel 2 for the Nintendo Wii, the stylized mix of gunplay and sword action, and Avatar, the movie tie-in which also performed well on the Nintendo home console.
In the coming months, Ubisoft expects to see continuing strong sales of Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell: Conviction, which managed to be the best selling title in North America during April, but high hopes are also linked with Prince of Persia: The Forgotten Sands, the new installment in the long-running series which adds nature based powers to the time shifting mechanics. Later on the publisher will also launch Ghost Recon: Future Soldier and Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood.