Ubisoft in red, but going in right direction
by Justin Murray 
{ Dec 7th 2006 at 11:30AM }
Ubisoft, maker of the Tom Clancy line of games, didn't meet their primary business objective; they failed to make a profit in the first six months of this year. However, Ubisoft is moving in the right direction.
Ubisoft ate a €35.5 million loss (that fruit doesn't taste any good, we'll tell you) in the first half of the fiscal year on sales of €172.1 million. The bright side is the loss is far less than the €43.7 million last year and the sales are up 13%. Ubisoft also more than doubled their expected Xbox Live sales to €3 million -- up from an expected €1.3 million -- thanks to brisk sales of the Advanced Warfighter map pack. To further help Ubisoft's outlooks, major hitters like Advanced Warfighter 2, Assassin's Creed and Brothers in Arms: Hell's Highway are launching during the current fiscal year.
It is good to see Ubi's fortunes beginning to turn around; they make a number of quality games that we would not want to lose. Hopefully Ubisoft can turn their fortunes around and make their stock more valuable; EA owns 20% of Ubisoft and if they continue to slide, EA could buy them outright. We're not sure about you guys, but we'd rather not see EA Presents Assassin's Creed on our box.
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Nates4god @ Dec 7th 2006 11:46AM
Hey guys I think the good Wii sales for Ubi has at least a LITTLE to do with it....don't you?
Agent MOO @ Dec 7th 2006 11:43AM
Go, oobiesoft!
Mikeawesome @ Dec 7th 2006 8:18PM
So EA is already dipping it's hand into the proverbial Ubisoft Cookie-jar?
Damn. :\
Here's hoping they don't slide any further.
biltmore @ Dec 7th 2006 12:39PM
They make a number of quality games ... hmmm
Let's see ...
Have you played Splinter Cell : Double Agent for the PC ? It's nothing but a shitty port with so many bugs, theres no way in hell it was play tested in Shanghai .. nothing but a cut and paste job from the 360. I've loved every SP game until now, this is just downright horrid. I should've checked the forums before buying this game.
Rainbow Six : Lockdown suffered the same fate, and we had to wait MONTHS for a single patch. Which in my opinion, is bullshit.
Even the new Rainbow Six : Vegas has it's fair share of problems on the 360.
Ubisoft is starting to get pretty good at delivering an Alpha or Beta product at retail ... which is bullshit. Obviously the games need more time to be worked on, but they've already spent so much money on them, they need to quickly turn a profit. It's just shitty business practices.
Before you ever buy another Ubisoft game at launch, I highly guarantee that you have a look at the games forum before you by ... that way you know what kind of a product you're buying from them (alpha or beta).
Pete C @ Dec 7th 2006 12:50PM
Ubisoft is the best 3rd party publisher IMO. Here's to hoping EA doesn't swoop in and ruin everything.
Frosty22 @ Dec 7th 2006 12:44PM
Nate... yes it has a LITTLE to do with it.
Their biggest hitters were Splinter Cell for 360, GRAW for 360, and now Rainbow Six for the... yep you guessed it, 360.
Microsoft is the reason why Ubisoft isn't down the river without a paddle.
Frosty22 @ Dec 7th 2006 1:22PM
biltmore... with hundreds of thousands of lines of code... there are bound to be errors. Quit your whining. We don't live in a perfect world, and we will never have perfect products.
I, for one, have enjoyed every single Ubisoft game on the 360 to date. Were they perfect? no. Did they have some bugs? yep. But they were all still amazing games.
Judd @ Dec 7th 2006 1:22PM
Frosty22 is right. The 360 is Ubisoft's system as seen by Microsoft picking up rights to Splinter Cell: Conviction, and games such as Assassin's Creed losing PS3 exclusivity. I gotta say though, with an exception to Rayman: Raving Rabbids(which is a fun party game, but short and not great), the Wii Ubisoft games have sucked. There was a lot of hype around all the launch titles they were bringing to the Wii but they've been pretty dissapointing.
From GameFaqs:
Rayman 79%, Red Steel 65.5%,
Splinter Cell:Double Agent 61%, Monster 4X4 World Circuit 51%, GT Pro Series 45.2%, Open Season 39%.
Everyone criticized Rare after the 360 launch for Kameo and PDZ, both in my eyes underrated games. Kameo was short but beautiful, and PDZ's single player sucked but has a very deep multiplayer. While Ubisoft get's let off the hook for a launch with 6 games including; 1 decent title, 2 passable ones, and 3 crappy games. And don't expect Far Cry, and Blazing Angels to be that good. Don't get me wrong I like Ubisoft(can't wait till Assassin's Creed) and I like my Wii. They just don't seem to mix that well.
Turo @ Dec 7th 2006 1:34PM
@4
maybe u should go back and get another copy of rainbowsix vegas or something b/c its easily one of the best games this year and im loving it. and as for the problems, did u not hear of the forthcoming patch? oh and it seems u have a 360 obviously so y play double agent on the pc? im also loving it on my 360 :D
u keep bashing these great games w/ descriptions as "horrid" and such, but what are u really talking about? these are some of the best titles in quite a while!
half of the best games i play lately are ubi games! graw, double agent, r6 vegas, etc. if ur not playing these, what else are you playing besides gears of war?
Daniel @ Dec 7th 2006 1:29PM
Ubisoft is admittedly putting out some problematic products because they're getting so big. I really like them, and know they have a lot of talent; I just don't want them to go the way of EA, where a lot of the time it seems quantity > quality.
That being said, Ubisoft still puts out some awesome games. GRAW is still one of the best 360 games to date and Rainbow Six Vegas, though I was unimpressed at first, is really growing on me. Raving Rabbids is a ton of fun and Red Steel is underrated (believe me - it takes a lot of patience but it's absolutely worth it if you play through the game for more than a couple of hours and get used to the controls).
I'm still rooting for the Ubi.
biltmore @ Dec 7th 2006 2:04PM
I'm mainly bitching about the PC ports .. and yes the 360 versions run a lot better than the PC versions. If you want to argue with me on that, then go and hit up the forums for those 3 games then come back to me.
Yes, I'm glad they're gonna patch R6:V, but that still doesn't help the broken PC versions of SP:DA or R6:LD.
biltmore @ Dec 7th 2006 6:39PM
And Frosty22, I paid 50 bucks for my copy of SP:DA on PC, and it's broke. Don't believe me, go hit the forums and see all the other people (like me) that are having issues. I'll bitch if I want thank you very much.
mAdAk @ Dec 7th 2006 2:10PM
What about the possibility of Microsoft buying Ubisoft if they continue to struggle financially?
Duscrom @ Dec 7th 2006 2:19PM
Ubisoft is, to me, Two Amazeing studios, and a few good once, and a few bad ones. THe Amazing studios are Ubi Montreal (Splinter Cell 1 & Chaos Theory, PoP Rainbow Six 3, and Rainbow Six Vegas) and the Rayman/Beyond Good And Evil studio. Ubi Shanghai (Splinter Cell, Pandora Tomorrow and Doubble Agent) is okay, but their SC games are not as polished or well designed as Montreal. Other then that.. they have a crap load of kids movie tie ins.. and so on.. like any publisher.
I'm surprised noone is noticeing though the number 2 biggest pub though, THQ... who's been running on a string of hits lately. Company Of Heroes, Titan Quest, Saint's Row and Destroy All Humans 2.
Duscrom @ Dec 7th 2006 2:19PM
Oh and you wanna talk buggy Ubi PC games? I just grabbed a boxed copy of Dark Massiah of Might and Magic, and holy crap.. First it wouldn't install.. even AFTER a new installation of Windows, So It's only run twice... (And when it did, it's a GREAT game), but now it can never detect the disc in the drive... Though let's add to that the other bugs in the game itself, like performance bugs.. like me being able to play it at full detail for one moment, then it loads a level and all of a sudden it's jumpy as hell. and an uunplayable slide show.
flyNN @ Dec 7th 2006 4:03PM
Joystiq, I've used info from your posts when considering stocks. Obviously you are very in tune with income, projections and such... why don't you include links to Stock Quote pages or at least include the Stock Symbol? Best yet would be embedded live performance graphs. (???)
http://finance.google.com/finance?q=ubi&hl=en
Pince @ Dec 7th 2006 11:57PM
Wow, how is Ubi just bleeding money like that. For the most part, their games get a great reception and sell, if not like hotcakes, then at least like moderately warm cakes.
They must just be blowing money left and right on hugely ambitious projects...oh...wait a sec. They are. I mean, to be fair, their big titles are all big budget action games really, while other companies can easily make sales on licenced games like Cars, or on little spinoff franchises or remakes(SquareEnix, Nintendo, etc). I mean, unless Open Season sells a lot (raise your hand if you saw that movie...ok then). I guess if you are gonna play big, you have a to hit a homerun every time, which might not be possible.
I would really like to see a breakdown of what games, on an individual basis, sales/development and advertising costs, have been profitable for them. I am interested to see EXACTLY where they manage to lose all that money.
roushmustang @ Dec 17th 2006 9:49AM
No one has the right to tell anyone to not bitch about a product that is proven to have major issues especially if that person bought it. Biltmore can bitch all he wants, he owns the product and can back up his allegations with proof. I've got SC:DA for PC and the game crashes EVERY time I play it. Had I stopped and read the forums before I bought the game I wouldn't have bought it because I would have seen that most everyone is having issues with the PC and even 360 version. Shame on you who are so quick to defend a topic when you don't even know all the facts. Yes, there will always be bugs in a game but if the bugs SEVERELY limit the gameplay in such a way that the game is not playable then that's a big problem. They either completely skipped the QA part of the SDLC cycle or they just decided not to fix them for whatever reason.
So bitch away my friend, you have every right to.