Ubisoft has postponed the release date of 3 games and significantly lowered expectations for the current year. Ubisoft cites the poor performance of Ghost Recon Breakpoint and, to a lesser extent, The Division 2 as the reason. This cost the stock 20% on the stock market. The price fell to its lowest level since April 2017.
This was Ubisoft’s announcement: Ubisoft announced on Thursday that the sales figures for the games “Ghost Recon Breakpoint” and “The Division 2” have fallen short of expectations: The Division 2, however, was “to a lesser extent” disappointing compared to Ghost Recon Breakpoint, which was overall a disaster.
To improve the quality of the next games, Ubisoft has postponed the release of 3 titles from the current financial year (ending March 2020):
- Watch Dogs Legion – an action game where you can play as any resident of London
- Rainbow Six Quarantine – is set to be the PvE version of Rainbow Six Siege
- Gods & Monsters – an action RPG that is said to be inspired by Zelda (via gamestar)
The 3 games will all be released in 2020/2021, starting no earlier than April 2020.
Ubisoft then significantly lowered its financial expectations for the year 2019/2020. The expected operating profit fell to 20 to 50 million euros – previously it was 480 million euros.
So the stock market reacted: As reported by CNBC , Ubisoft’s stock dropped by 20% on Friday morning. The price has reached its lowest level in 2 years, since April 2017.
After a long rise, now a setback
What’s behind it: For Ubisoft, the last few years have actually been all about upward momentum. The model with “Games as a Service” titles seemed to be paying off.
Ubisoft made a name for itself by rescuing and monetizing poorly launched games. Especially The Division 1 and Rainbow Six Siege are considered prime examples of how games were improved over time.
Even a title like “For Honor” has been developed and monetized for a long time. Ghost Recon Wildlands was relatively surprisingly a success and was well received.
The “back catalog”, the games that are already out, seemed to get stronger and better over time. This was good for Ubisoft’s profit and strengthened the stock.
The last two AAA titles The Division 2 and Ghost Recon Breakpoint were now sequels to service games that had been nurtured, improved, and expanded over the years.
It seemed unclear to many players why they should buy a “new, second game in the same series”.
This apparently led to issues, as Ubisoft analyzed itself.
