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Ubisoft financials: 65% revenue increase YoY, Watch Dogs 9 million shipped

I

IAmRandom31

Banned
28% of total sales being Digital is interesting.

Wonder if other companies are aeeing similar margins. Could then basically take a NPD number and add 20-30% to it

I own exactly 0 physical games right now. Both PC and PS4

Also hopefully Child of light sales were good enough to warrant a full on sequel or another JRPG project from that team. Score that composer again too. Best soundtrack in awhile of that style
 
M

Mass_Pincup

Banned
Damerman said:
I'm not angry with their successful strategy, I'm angry with how it got to be so successful and how it makes them complacent. Complacent might be the wrong word... probably more like severely(to a fault) business-minded. The same thing that Activision are doing with COD. One of the most dubious foundations of business is: past history shows _____ so we should _____. Yes, its the smart thing to do because thats all we have to go on as dumb business men trying to earn a living... but what about another fundamental aspect of business: greater risk = greater returns.

I'm not saying GTA V is the riskiest AAA.... but it sure as hell can be pound for pound compared to the others. Look at those returns 34 million units... Nothing proves that Ubisoft is the most risk averse publisher than the fact that they extrapolate this "unlock map by going to the top of this to get more missions" structure to all their AAA open world games. And frankly, its becoming painfully obvious. They need to change, they are coagulating into a clot. To their credit, they have a diverse portolio that could see them through rough times, unlike Activision/Blizzard who has all their eggs in the COD/WOW basket. But still... they need to shake things up.
Click to expand...

When they release games like Prince of Persia 2008, Beyond Good and Evil, Rayman, Red Steel and ZombiU no one buys them.

And people tend to forgot that they also release game like Might and Magic 10, Child of light, Lumines, Valiant Heart, Far Cry Blood Dragon, I am Alive or Call of Juarez Gunslinger. That's awesome coming from the 3rd biggest publisher just look at the output of the others, Ubisoft is the best alongside Take Two.
 
K

Kill3r7

Member
Shredderi said:
Ubisoft has become a very well oiled machine pumping out games fast and making a bank with them. It seems that Ubisoft makes profit pretty consistently. Nice to soo pc doing well. Xbone numbers are lower than I expected.
Click to expand...

Surprising for sure but if you look deeper you'll see that Ubisoft sold 47% of their games in Europe, a region where X1 is currently getting killed in. Also, NPD numbers would suggest that WD did significantly better on PS4 than X1 (understandably so).
 
Damerman

Damerman

Member
Setsuna said:
One question

If they remove it would it make the game better?
Click to expand...

uhh, no, it would remove any kind of incentive to explore... which would be even worse, as the games hardly have any to begin with. I hate to use games that aren't out yet, but look at witcher 3 and Dragon Age Inquisition... they both have their own unique way of encouraging exploration. Witcher 3 entices you with deep and mature strings of quests that keep you engaged with lore and mystery with choices that permanently affect that area. Dragon Age inquisition has the same thing, but they way about doing it is totally related to the war table where you are gathering resources for the Inquisition which you can customize to a T. So you go into caves to find mineral veins, or you find an enemies Docked ship so you set them ablaze to prevent retreat... where is that sort of creativity in Ubi's games?
 
K

Kill3r7

Member
Saty said:
It's not only full game downloads of retail game but a bunch of stuff. In the call they said the digital share of retail games is between 10-20%. Watch Dogs is 16% for example.
Click to expand...

Ah, that makes more sense. I guess they are including DLC and non-retail games.
 
C

Crossing Eden

Hello, my name is Yves Guillemot, Vivendi S.A.'s Employee of the Month!
Damerman said:
uhh, no, it would remove any kind of incentive to explore... which would be even worse, as the games hardly have any to begin with. I hate to use games that aren't out yet, but look at witcher 3 and Dragon Age Inquisition... they both have their own unique way of encouraging exploration. Witcher 3 entices you with deep and mature strings of quests that keep you engaged with lore and mystery with choices that permanently affect that area. Dragon Age inquisition has the same thing, but they way about doing it is totally related to the war table where you are gathering resources for the Inquisition which you can customize to a T. So you go into caves to find mineral veins, or you find an enemies Docked ship so you set them ablaze to prevent retreat... where is that sort of creativity in Ubi's games?
Click to expand...
Both of those are rpgs, pretty weird comparison, I could complain that the movement in those games is very stiff compared to AC. But that would make just as much sense.
 
Damerman

Damerman

Member
Setsuna said:
you not just complain about the next common denominator?
Click to expand...

If by common denominatore you mean, putting that same gameplay mechanic in all your games, fuck yeah i'll complain.

Don't get it twisted, I'm not complaining about the mechanic being in every AC game.

If you developed it for the AC IP, sure keep it there and iterate on it, but don't put it in watch dogs, or Far cry, thats lazy.
 
C

Crossing Eden

Hello, my name is Yves Guillemot, Vivendi S.A.'s Employee of the Month!
Damerman said:
If by common denominatore you mean, putting that same gameplay mechanic in all your games, fuck yeah i'll complain.
Click to expand...
But what if those games are very different in feel and gameplay from one another. Bioware and Besthesda's main dev teams put dialogue options into their games, that's not lazy. Putting a tried and true mechanic into other games isn't the worst thing in the world when the gameplay of those games are very different from each other when you actually have the controller in your hand.
 
Damerman

Damerman

Member
Crossing Eden said:
Both of those are rpgs, pretty weird comparison, I could complain that the movement in those games is very stiff compared to AC. But that would make just as much sense.
Click to expand...

well, the movement doesn't look to be that stiff for either game to be honest. but that is besides the point... the point is Ubisoft has a stagnating design for exploration incentive...no one can deny that...
 
Damerman

Damerman

Member
Crossing Eden said:
But what if those games are very different in feel and gameplay from one another. Bioware and Besthesda's main dev teams put dialogue options into their games, that's not lazy. Putting a tried and true mechanic into other games isn't the worst thing in the world when the gameplay of those games are very different from each other when you actually have the controller in your hand.
Click to expand...
i see what you are saying... and what i have to say to that is concerning what Cliff Blezenski said during Nvidias game 24 event. He was talking about how when he plays games he plays them for alike an hour and then says "oh, i see what the developer is trying to do" and then quits the game... Something to that effect. Well, thats what happens to these games... the concept, no matter how varied the gameplay is, is the first thing you see... "hey, this is just like what we had to do with AC and Far Cry 3"... and then the immersion is gone.
 
M

MauroNL

Member
30% digital is high but EA's 12 month digital revenue is even higher:

"On a trailing twelve month basis, EA had record net revenue* of $4.481 billion (of which a record $2.0 billion was digital*), record net income* of $843 million and record operating cash flow of $1.153 billion." Roughly 45%

Will be interesting to look at Activision Blizzard's financials next
 
C

Crossing Eden

Hello, my name is Yves Guillemot, Vivendi S.A.'s Employee of the Month!
Damerman said:
well, the movement doesn't look to be that stiff for either game to be honest. but that is besides the point... the point is Ubisoft has a stagnating design for exploration incentive...no one can deny that...
Click to expand...
Maybe that's the reason why exploration in Unity works differently than in previous games, one point being that using the towers doesn't automatically show the player all available side missions and that they have to explore to find certain events and side missions. Should expect that going forward.
 
Bl@de

Bl@de

Member
Dat PS4 percentage.
vtj5rsid6u9d.gif
 
U

UpDownLeftRight

Banned
I can't remember how much Ubi released last year but I don't remember them having any high profile releases on par with the attention WE garnered in the first half of the year. Typically they drop their high profile titles at the end of the year and the same was planned for WD originally so I'm dubious of how much improvement this truly shows.

That may just be me hoping that they don't recycle more WD for the rest of the gen though, but the sales for the game alone seem very good for any game, let alone a new IP.
 
J

John Harker

Definitely doesn't make things up as he goes along.
IAmRandom31 said:
28% of total sales being Digital is interesting.

Wonder if other companies are aeeing similar margins. Could then basically take a NPD number and add 20-30% to it

I own exactly 0 physical games right now. Both PC and PS4

Also hopefully Child of light sales were good enough to warrant a full on sequel or another JRPG project from that team. Score that composer again too. Best soundtrack in awhile of that style
Click to expand...

That's not really what it's saying.

It's saying of their revenue, 28% of the total were from digital sales.

So that includes things like iOS games, microstransactions, DLC, digital-only games like Child of Light, Valiant Hearts, season passes, and retail games sold digitally.

It's not saying 28% of console sales were digital.

So basically what I'm saying is, the number is really good, but you can't just add it to a console sale at retail and assume that the game sold that much digitally as well as retail
 
T

Turin Turambar

Member
Damerman said:
man, thats fucking bullshit. This "new IP" is released with the most generic gameplay of all time and it shipps 9 million copies... and now they are going to milk this poor formula until the market is saturated the same way as AC... what is so hard about creating value? why do these publishers insist on running their IPs to the ground?

I don't have a problem with the watch dogs IP, its just that this and AC set a precedent for how Ubi are going to attack the "New IP"... they are going to release a game masquarding as having new revolutionary gameplay, but when it comes out, its actually a 7 at best due to riskless gameplay and then when the IP is established, they will "improve" it in SMALL inconsequential Yearly iterations.

Sure, its a nice comfortable place to be, but one of the things i've learned from business is to never get comfortable.

Also: nice to see PC getting consistent numbers year over year.
Click to expand...

Mmm so salty.
Watch Dogs gameplay was a leaps and bounds over other sandbox city games. Better action, better stealth, decent driving, some freedom to do missions as you see fit with some emergent gameplay, interesting hacking gimmick applied, good minigames and activities.
 
S

SwiftDeath

Member
theprodigy said:
Watch Dogs vs Destiny is almost like PS3 vs 360, if you flip Japan :p
Click to expand...

That seems a fairly apt comparison :)

BUT WAIT! A Wii U version of Watch Dogs is to be released. That's 6 platforms for Watch Dogs versus only 4 platforms for Destiny! Clearly an unfair comparison
lol I wonder by how many factors the PC version of Watch Dogs will outsell the Wii U one
 
B

bigboss370

Member
IAmRandom31 said:
Also hopefully Child of light sales were good enough to warrant a full on sequel or another JRPG project from that team. Score that composer again too. Best soundtrack in awhile of that style
Click to expand...

I'm guessing it was good enough cuz they turned that development team into their own studio :)

also, goddamn some people are really salty when games they don't like are successful,
 
G

Gruco

Banned
I've never touched any of their sandbox games and frankly never plan on it, but I still think Ubi is a fantastic company and always applaud their success, due to the fact that they made games like Vandal Hearts and Child of Light and Rayman. Wild looks awesome, and we may get another BG&E.

I'll never understand how people can be so viscerally offended by games just for existing. This whole discussion reminds me a lot about the crappy shovelware that flooded Wii/DS era Nintendo. I was more than happy to see stuff like that because Nintendo being successful helped to subsidize the Fire Emblems and Metroid Primes of the world.

Go Ubi go. Can't wait for BG&E2, and the next game from the Child of Light team.
 
V

Vibranium

Banned
I wonder how UPlay performed in comparison to Steam...

If it was me I'd reach a profit percentage deal with Valve and shutter the thing, it must cost money to operate.
 
M

Mooreberg

is sharpening a shovel and digging a ditch
Beartruck said:
Pretty funny it sold that well when most critical reception to it(especially on here) has been pretty tepid.
Click to expand...
It is not surprising. The other publishers have let Ubisoft and Activision run away with 2014. Now the rest of them will be stuck in a logjam next year, with much bigger first party titles coming out.

AC in 2007 will always be surprising, because there were at least two dozen better games released that year.
 
R

RE_Player

Member
Rarely do I get upset about things in the gaming industry but seeing Watch Dogs be this much of a success is infuriating. So many more games deserve the attention and sales. Watch Dogs was such a cobbled together mess. One of the handful of games I traded back in my life.
 
A

alexandros

Banned
Durante said:
I'm sure 16% of the 17% PC were purchases of Might and Magic X: Legacy, the best game Ubisoft released this year. Right?

... right?
Click to expand...

If only... Anyway the PC numbers are pretty good, imagine how high they would be if Ubisoft actually put some more effort into its ports.
 
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