Paris (France) (AFP) – Strong performances from major franchises including an “Avatar” tie-in game and juggernaut “Assassin’s Creed” buttressed struggling French games giant Ubisoft’s third-quarter results, the company said Thursday. Revenue at 318 million euros ($380 million) in October-December had made for a “solid” period “exceeding our expectations,” chief executive Yves Guillemot said in a statement.
Ubisoft’s star has fallen with investors in recent months, as it has weathered mixed reception for some new titles and announced a far-reaching restructuring and cost-cutting drive. Shares in the group have lost almost 95 percent of their value in five years, booking their worst single-day performance in January with a 40-percent collapse. Ubisoft reported Thursday that its preferred “net bookings” yardstick, which excludes revenue from deferred sales, climbed 12 percent year-on-year to almost 340 million euros in its third quarter. The pace was still higher over the first nine months of the financial year, adding 17.6 percent to reach 1.1 billion euros.
Major contributors to sales growth included the latest instalment in the Assassin’s Creed series, released last year, and the “Avatar” film tie-in game “Frontiers of Pandora”—updated to coincide with the release of the James Cameron saga’s latest episode in December. The company will release two mobile games from popular franchises “Rainbow Six” and “The Division” by the end of March.
But Ubisoft also confirmed its January forecast of an operating loss of around one billion euros for the full financial year, sapped by multiple delays and cancellations announced alongside details of its restructuring. Bosses’ woes are far from over, as the company this week faced a three-day strike by several hundred of its 3,800 French employees. Triggers for the walkout included an end to work-from-home provisions.
Ubisoft’s restructuring will farm out many of its dozens of studios worldwide into an industry-first system of five “creative houses,” each dedicated to developing a different genre of game. The company is making “key leadership appointments,…including external hires of experienced, respected industry veterans” to head the houses, Guillemot said Thursday. Ubisoft had said in January that it was launching a third round of cost-cutting aimed at finding 200 million euros of savings over two years.
The company announced the same month that it would look to slash up to 200 of around 1,100 positions at its Paris headquarters. Such cuts follow studio closures elsewhere in its global network, including San Francisco, Osaka, Stockholm, Leamington in Britain, and Canada’s Halifax. France’s biggest games company, Ubisoft today has around 17,000 employees worldwide after shedding more than 3,000 in recent years.
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