In their financial report for the year ended March 31, 2016, Ubisoft revealed that The Division has reached 9.5 million players, while Far Cry Primal set a sales record for a game released in February.
For The Division, Ubisoft said it “attained very high player engagement levels,” with 9.5 million registered players, and active players playing an average of three hours per day. In addition to exceeding expectations, it also became the most successful new video game launch ever.
Far Cry Primal also exceeded expectations and had “the best performance ever for a game released in the month of February.”
Rainbow Six Siege, meanwhile, doubled its audience and daily active users is at 60% of peak four months after launch, which Ubisoft calls “a remarkable performance compared with industry standards and a clear illustration of the exceptional retention power of the game’s multiplayer mode.”
The Division, Far Cry Primal, and Rainbow Six Siege are all in the top five best-selling games of the first three months of 2016, according to NPD, GfK, and internal estimates.
With Ubisoft reporting a 4.8% drop in total sales to €1.39 billion, CEO and Co-Founder Yves Guillemot talked about the previous fiscal year:
We ended fiscal 2015-16 on a very positive note, having effectively executed our plan: the performances delivered by The Division and Far Cry Primal exceeded our expectations, we continued our major come-back in the multiplayer segment and we saw a significant increase in player engagement levels for our games. The Division currently has 9.5 million registered users, and active players are playing the game an average of three hours [as of May 8, 2016] per day. These successes resulted in our digital segment outperforming our targets for the fiscal year and positively impacted our profitability.
Since our initial public offering 20 years ago, we have built one of the world’s leading players in the entertainment industry and have created significant value for our shareholders, with a 14-fold increase in the Company’s share price. Over the past few years, we have considerably strengthened our portfolio of owned brands. For example, we have tripled the audience for Far Cry, doubled it for Rainbow Six, and launched The Division and Watch Dogs which were the first and third-largest releases ever for a new video game brand. In parallel, we have increased the sales weighting of our digital segment to 32%, primarily through organic growth.
Digital sales accounted for 32% of total sales (up from 26.1% on the previous year), while back-catalog sales accounted for 25.4% of total sales.
Looking at Ubisoft’s full-year sales by platform, the PlayStation 4 led the way with 42%, followed by the Xbox One at 26%, PC at 14%, Xbox 360 at 4%, PlayStation 3 and Wii at 3%, and Wii U at 2%.
Finally, for this current fiscal year (ending March 31, 2017), Ubisoft expects “a rise in revenues from new games releases, with a larger number of AAA title releases (five compared with four).” These games are Ghost Recon Wildlands, South Park: The Fractured But Whole, For Honor, Watch Dogs 2, and an unannounced new AAA IP.
[Source: Ubisoft]
