The developer studio and publisher Ubisoft has provided insight into their figures for the last quarter of 2019. There is much praise for Rainbow Six Siege, but they barely mention their big flop Ghost Recon: Breakpoint.
What was presented? Ubisoft showed their figures for the last quarter of 2019, running from October 1 to December 31. The important Christmas sales period is included in this timeframe.
The key findings: As big winners, Ubisoft celebrates:
- Rainbow Six Siege
- Assassin’s Creed Odyssey
- The Crew 2
- Mario + Rabbids Kingdom Battle
- Just Dance 2020
However, Ubisoft also mentions that the fiscal year 2019 fell significantly short of original expectations. This is likely primarily related to Ghost Recon Breakpoint. The game did not perform well and even caused the Ubisoft stock to drop to a low in October 2019.
Rainbow Six still extremely successful
How Rainbow Six is doing: In the quarterly report, Ubisoft lists some successes of Rainbow Six from the past quarter:
- Over 55 million registered users
- A record for monthly active players in December
- Increase in sales of digital items, DLCs, and season passes
- Ranked 7th in the most impressive games from The Esports Observer
Rainbow Six Siege was already praised in the first quarterly report of 2019. They expressed excitement that it is also performing better in the 4th year than the previous year.
What is said about other games? The 2020 installment of Just Dance was positively highlighted by Ubisoft. It sells about as well as the 2019 release.
Additionally, Assassin’s Creed Odyssey is also receiving praise. The game is performing significantly better than its predecessor.
How does Ubisoft generally fare? They compare the figures from 2019 with the figures from 2016. While they had 2 billion gameplay hours 4 years ago, there were already 4.5 billion gameplay hours in 2019.
Compared to previous years, the last quarter of 2019 is expected to reach similarly high figures. So there are no signs of a crisis at Ubisoft.
Ubisoft ignores Breakpoint – only briefly mentions it
The major controversy in 2019 was certainly the release of Ghost Recon: Breakpoint for Ubisoft. The game flopped because players did not understand why they should set aside the predecessor. Because Wildlands was continuously improved, even long after the release.
Ubisoft does not even show the new title of Ghost Recon in the quarterly figures. A statement by Yves Guillemot, the co-founder and Chief Executive Officer of Ubisoft, suggests that it was a flop. He says: “Although the current fiscal year falls significantly short of our original expectations, […]”.
Breakpoint itself only appears briefly in the report: among the releases of the current quarter. This refers to Adventure 1, which is scheduled for this quarter.
What does this mean? One can only speculate what it means for Ghost Recon: Breakpoint to not appear in the quarterly report.
A comparable case occurred with WildStar and the publisher NCSoft. The MMORPG gradually stopped appearing there and eventually disappeared completely from the reports. Later, the game was shut down.
It remains exciting around Breakpoint. It remains to be seen whether the game can eventually recover from the many criticisms.
Ubisoft has already postponed two major titles. The reason for this was also Ghost Recon: Breakpoint:
