Ubisoft has released its record first-quarter sales figures for 2018-19, with the French publisher banking €400 million ($466 million) in total.
The financial report reveals Nintendo Switch titles brought in a total of five percent of sales during this period, which is a four percent increase over the previous first quarter.
Mobile devices were slightly ahead of the Switch, sitting on eight percent, and the biggest earner for the company was game sales on the PlayStation 4 - adding up to a total of 38 percent.
One interesting development is the publisher’s PC sales outperforming a number of platforms, with a three percent gain compared to the same time last year.
It’s also worth noting Wii and Wii U sales have naturally slowed, dropping from two to just one percent.
Yves Guillemot, co-founder and CEO of Ubisoft made the following comments about the first-quarter of sales:
We had a record first quarter, which exceeded our expectations. This performance was fueled by steady growth for our backcatalog and an excellent momentum for PRI, once again confirming the increasingly recurring profile of our business and the ever-greater success of our digital transformation. Our teams are continuing to deliver on our strategic plan of ramping up our franchises.
Thanks to its numerous growth drivers, brisk digital trajectory and close-knit relations with its gamer communities, as well as the fact that it directly owns its brands, Ubisoft is ideally positioned to meet its targets for full-year 2018-19 and continue to grow and increase its profitability over the long term.
The content released on Nintendo platforms during this first quarter by Ubisoft included Mario + Rabbids Kingdom Battle – Donkey Kong Adventure.
As the Switch userbase grows, and Ubisoft continues to publish more games on the platform including the upcoming Starlink: Battle for Atlas featuring a cameo from Fox McCloud, it is likely sales growth in this area will continue to improve.
[source ubistatic19-a.akamaihd.net]
Comments 33
hmmm...hopefully they will put more of their content on the switch, so they can actually increase that number.
Considering that Switch only has a handful of big Ubisoft games while missing out on some of the biggest titles like Far Cry and Assassin's Creed, I'd say that's a pretty respectable percentage. And with games like Starlink and Trials on the way, it can only go up from here.
No surprise really, their Switch support has been pretty crap to be honest. Other than Mario v Rabbids what have we got from them
Just Dance 17/18
Monopoly
Rayman Legends Definitive Edition
South Park FBW
Hungry Shark
With Stick of Truth and Starlink on the way. One being a 3 year old game and another being a toys to life cash grab that I'm confident will be average at best,like most Ubisoft games.
For me Bethesda and Panic Button have overtaken Ubisoft as the best 3rd party supporters for Nintendo this gen.
@OorWullie Don't forget UNO!
So is this the part where they stop caring about the system?
4% YoY is nothing to sniff at!
So, is this good? I’m not an expert on this type of thing.
I bet Mario+Rabbids is 98% of that 4%
@Liam_Doolan UKNOW, I forgot all about UNO.
Come on, Ubisoft !
Revive some Old franchises such as Petz series, Imagine series and Localized Casual Japanese games to English version for Nintendo Switch.
I wonder if Fit Boxing for Switch will be localized by Ubisoft with under Gold's Gym name again.
PC and Switch clearly taking a big chunk of Ps4 sales. Xbox untouched.
Living off back catalogue in Q1 and PS4 keeping the lights on. 3year old SP port and Starlink probably not moving that 5% anytime soon.
North America 45%
Europe 35%
other regions 20%.
Japan does not even get its own slot
@Anti-Matter don't give them any ideas like that please i'd rather they focus some of their attention on bringing their bigger franchises to Switch be it in the form of port or an "exclusive" iteration on Switch.
Some other developers might want too follow suit...
looking at you Square, time to deliver on your promises
Starlink looks like a fun game, but the dorky ship controller and extra toy expense is going to put a lot of players off. I’d have bought it for the Arwing model alone if it sat on a portal of some sort.
@OorWullie even better, Stick of Truth is a 4 year old game...
Business wise 5% is low, and maybe the effort is not worth the return.
Now if only they could put 5% of their effort into Switch games...
@Wanjia pretty sure most of that comes from Just Dance
@Wanjia South park, Just dance x2, another South Park comming, Trials comming and the Shark thing + Starlink comming.
You put in low effort you get low returns.
Impossible to gauge the importance of the numbers without wider context. A four-point swing in revenue share (not a 4% rise!) could be far more significant than we know, given that it was apparently a record quarter. If revenue was up 20%, that would be like a 480% increase in Switch earnings. Even if revenue was flat, it's a 400% increase.
And that is only because they had what games available?
Mario+Rabbids and the DLC and, if I'm not mistaken, South Park.
On other platform they had a lot more games.
I guess it's not that bad considering the limitation of games.
I wonder though what happened to the Steep game. Maybe it's time to cancel it as the game is not getting 'newer' as time goes by.
Ubi! It would be a higher percentage if there were more games Hint hint
@RadioHedgeFund I think it's safe to say that the toys-to-life genre can certainly be a successful one cough*amiibo*cough
@Richard_Atkinson Amiibo have only really sold because they’re great models in their own right, for £12 a pop. The same was true of Lego Dimensions (Lego Mr. T! Lego Goonies!)
I'm looking forward to Starlink, at least. What I've seen reminds me vaguely of StarLancer for Dreamcast. Man, StarLancer is the bee's knees. Hopefully Ubisoft can pull of a good experience out of it.
With my limited understanding of such matters in mind, isn’t it growth that is the important metric in sales?
5% doesn’t seem much but if they are expecting that number to grow substantially as the user base if the system grows, then investment would make sense.
Well, Ubisoft only has a few games on the system at the moment: Just Dance 2017, Rayman Legends, Mario + Rabbids, Uno, Monopoly, South Park, and Just Dance 2018.
@OorWullie Don't forget the fact that Stick of Truth was also included with FBW on other platforms whereas it looks like Switch owners may have to buy them separately. Not to mention the fact that FBW was already cheaper on other platforms by the time it came to Switch, meaning you could get two games on PS4/XBONE for cheaper than you could for one game on Switch. Honestly, considering the fact that Ubisoft hasn't really put any of their major franchises on Switch yet, the Switch accounting for 5% of their revenue is pretty impressive.
New Rayman on thtwitter Switch, please! And a 3D one, like Rayman 2 and 3. As much as I like Origins and Legends I miss the older style.
@KIRO Just to add to your point, it's not just a userbase thing. Ubisoft has a much bigger catalogue of older games on the other platforms. They still get revenue from games they released in 2013-2016 that for the most part aren't on Switch. That's a sizable list of games from which to receive steady sales. Granted, they don't receive as much revenue from those games as they did upon release, but those games could still make up a decent chunk of their income.
So, considering that the Switch's catalogue of Ubisoft games is much smaller and that the Switch currently has the lowest install base of the 3 major consoles, accounting for 5% of Ubisoft's revenue isn't bad.
@OorWullie The word out of E3 is that Starlink is an incredibly competent, and potentially good, open world Star Fox 64-esk title.
The Toys to Life portion of the Game is Not required to Play, unlike other games in the Genre.
Just imagine how much bigger that 5% could have been if the Switch had Far Cry 5 and Assassins Creed; along with last year's Ghost Recon, Assassin's Creed etc.
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