Ubisoft reports first half '08 sales up 32%

It took Ubisoft a little while to release its first half financial results for the six-month period ended September 30, 2008 – we saw the Q2 results last month – but you'll be glad you waited: Sales for the half reached €344.5 million, up 31.8% from the same period last year. Who do we have to thank for that? Casual games, of course, which accounted for over 35% of total sales in the period compared to just 15% last year. It's not just sales though – profits were also up to €201.6 million for the period from €167.6 million last year.

That's all great for the first half – that was the half before the world economy went straight down the crapper. But not so fast! It would appear that "international economic crisis" doesn't translate very well into French as evidenced by Ubi CEO Yves Guillemot's comments on its upcoming Q3 forecasting: "Based on our initial sales figures for the third fiscal quarter and thanks to the diversity of our game line-up, we are confident that we will be able to achieve the targets that we recently raised for full-year 2008-09, despite a highly competitive environment marked by the launch of numerous high-quality games."

Ubi's Q3 includes End War, Far Cry 2, Shaun White Snowboarding, and Prince of Persia – sounds like a solid lineup to us. We'll see if Mr. Guillemot's forecast holds water in a couple months time.