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Ubisoft's latest sales report details the company's proposed fourth quarter fiscal year releases -- the period beginning January 1, 2010 until March 31, 2010. It's pretty much everything we expected, with profits for Ubisoft relying on four key titles, three of which are on the PC platform: Assassin's Creed II: Director's Cut, Red Steel 2, The Settlers 7: Paths to a Kingdom and Silent Hunter 5: Battle for the Atlantic.

However, other notable titles will also release during this window, including Racquet Sports and the upcoming Assassin's Creed 2: Multiplayer on iPhone -- oh, and a bunch of new Imagine games, obviously. Outside of detailing these games, Ubisoft also announced that its popular Anno series is coming to the iPhone. Exact details on the game haven't been revealed, but it's a safe bet that city planning and real-time strategy will somehow be involved. Head past the break for the full list of releases.

Source - Ubisoft Q3 sales report [PDF link]

According to a recent Ubisoft press release, launched alongside its Q3 earnings report, either this year or the next will see the introduction of what may be the company's most profitable property to date -- Imagine Town, an online extension of the popular series of casual DS games. Little is known about the platform so far, though the presser stipulates that it will be "a virtual world" which will be seamlessly folded into "UbiWorld™, the portal dedicated to young girls." (In any other context, that would be an extremely creepy thing to say.)

We realize this news probably means very, very little to you, so allow us to frame it to you in a different way: Imagine Town is going to be the thing that lets Ubisoft afford to make Beyond Good & Evil 2. See, now you're interested.

Classic moment to remember from the Ubisoft press conference: As the company displayed its roster of Imagine games the crowd was so tickled by the surreality of the moment, that the chuckling got pretty bad. It was quieted fairly quickly though when one large gentleman remarked "Laugh it up, my daughter buys all this shit, and I'm the one paying for it."

If there's a better summation of the casual market, we've never heard it.

Ubisoft's press conference just took a turn for the boastful as the publisher praised its highly profitable casual franchises, Petz and Imagine. In order to rake in more solid gold bars of gold, Ubisoft is attempting to achieve a sales nirvana they're calling "Tween Games 2.0." The latest push in this attempt? An all new for-kids (let's be honest, for little girls) franchise known as "Style Lab."

The franchise will feature games that implement the DSi's camera for various girly reasons -- take a picture of yourself, and tart yourself up with make-up, or design your own jewelry which you can submit online and order in real life. Day. One. Purchase.

Ubisoft announced its financial results (PDF link) for fiscal 2008 (which ended on March 31, 2009), and for the most part news (or Newz, if you prefer) is good. Full-year sales for 2008 grew to €1.058 billion, up 14% over last year's €928 million total.

The company explained the strong results of its last quarter with "a continued very strong showing" for its Wii lineup, including Raving Rabbids TV Party, Shaun White Snowboarding Road Trip, and My Fitness Coach. One million units each of Shaun White (not just limited to the Wii version), Tom Clancy's HAWX and the Petz and Imagine games were shipped to retailers in Q4.

Ubisoft's sales target for the 2009 fiscal year is €1.1 billion. It expects the first quarter sales of 2009 to be weaker than 2008's, due to the relative lack of major releases (Q1 2008 included Haze and Assassin's Creed on PC), with growth to occur in the second half of the year.

Source (PDF document)

Last week, Nintendo offered a demo of My DoItAll, and we didn't really mind, because despite being kid-focused and a non-game, it was kind of a novelty, worth trying out for a few minutes. This week, though, we're faced with the dreaded "I" word: Imagine. The one new demo on the Nintendo Channel this week is Ubisoft's Imagine Ice Champions, the sequel to Imagine Figure Skater. Maybe there's some novelty value in getting to try an Imagine game without any commitment -- just to see what it's like -- but we doubt this is going to send anyone running to the Wii.

We've got the full list of returning demos after the break, as well as this week's rather large crop of videos.

You may have noticed that we occasionally poke fun (and bile) at Ubisoft's Imagine series, and frankly, today isn't going to be any different. We're still holidayed out, and that means we need to have a little fun ... and that means it's time to design your own Imagine title. Imagine Making Piles of Cash might be fitting (if somewhat depressing, really), and no one really wants to play Imagine The Guy Who Washes Your Car, but it might have hilarious boxart. Anyway, imagining new games for Ubisoft is totally in the spirit of the franchise, right? Sure. We're playing Imagine Working for Ubisoft.

Apologies to anyone who works at a car wash (or Ubisoft). You were an easy target.

MCV reports that Imagine's Nintendo-only UK magazine, N•Revolution, will cease publication. In this day and age, with ad revenue and readership down – not to mention a little thing you're using called the internet – this move doesn't exactly come as a surprise. Its publisher's reasoning for the closure does.

Imagine's managing director, Damian Butt, says that Nintendo's focus is shifting away from the magazine's readership, i.e. core gamers. "It has become increasingly obvious that Nintendo's strategy...has moved increasingly away from the hardcore gaming community that is our specialty," Butt explained.

Still, Butt says that Imagine – which also publishes gamesTM – will continue to work with Nintendo to "drive purchases of Nintendo software." We're sure it will be in an entirely objective, unbiased, above-the-board way ... of working with a company to positively influence software sales through editorial. What could be wrong with that? Oh.

As DS gamers, we get exposed to a lot of games. Are there any you wish would just stop flooding the handheld? Are you sick of seeing training games? What genre/series are you fed up with hearing about? What do you think the DS could use less of?

So we've got what now ... rock star, teacher, babyz (sitter), chef, animal doctor (because veterinarian probably has too many syllables for a single word), and now wedding designer. There are probably even a few of Ubisoft's Imagine titles that we missed in that list, but hey -- we can't remember them all. But we can imagine the future of the line. What do you think about Imagine: Trophy Wife, or Imagine: Reality Show Star?

I couldn't think of a worse place to demo Imagine Party Babyz than E3. There are no very small children, no casual gamers, and no ... whoever else could conceivably be expected to be in the audience for the Imagine series -- just jaded, bitter journalists. And me.

As far as I could tell, I was the first person to try it (or among the first, I'm guessing, because the attending Frag Dolls didn't seem to have been forced to play the demo hundreds of times, even though I did lose at multiplayer). And far from the nefarious destroyer of gaming you may imagine, Party Babyz is actually kind of a good game. Because it takes its design cues straight out of Rayman Raving Rabbids. Only with doughy little sprogs instead of rabbids.

The minigame I played, in which you bottle-feed your baby character, is exactly the burping minigame from Raving Rabbids 2. You start by shaking the Wiimote to shake the bottle, then you upturn the Wiimote to simulate holding the bottle up. Points are awarded for every second or so that the baby drinks. When the baby has had enough, you lower the Wiimote and hit A to burp the baby. I don't know if it would still be fun if I weren't thinking about Rabbids while playing, but it was definitely actual fun under those conditions.

This could really, totally be a good game. Last time we checked, figure skating is a sport accompanied by music. It requires rhythmic motions and impeccable timing. All of these features are perfect for adapting to the touch screen on the DS. Tracing skating lines, tapping at the appropriate times, using smooth stylus skills -- yep, sounds like a winner.

Imagine Figure Skater is marketed towards young girls, what with the absence of any male characters and the emphasis on hair and accessory customization. Sure, some of us might not have considered playing a figure skating game in any form, but we probably said the same thing about lawyers. In any case, the first screenies are in the gallery to start you down the long, complex road of "Should I buy this game when it comes out in August?" The answer is ...


[Via press release]

The most notorious game in Ubisoft's Imagine series of girl-focused casual games is headed to the Wii -- as a party game, of course. Babies Party combines the babysitting theme of the DS game with 30 minigames including (according to the press release) "memory games, puzzles, coloring and cutting up activities."

You can choose to play either as a baby or a babysitter. It's unclear exactly how the gameplay will change, but we imagine that there are different minigames involving taking care of babies as opposed to being babies. As with pretty much every Wii game that gets announced, Babies Party will support the Balance Board in some games.

Babies Party enters the exciting genre of baby-based party minigames created by the Korean arcade series Come On Baby, which also made use of innovative controllers.

Ubisoft released information for four Imagine series games at their Ubiday event: Imagine Teacher, which we're in the uncomfortable position of kind of liking; Imagine Rock Star (Imagine Girl Band in the UK, because apparently there are no rock stars there); My Fashion Studio (Imagine Fashion Model in the UK); and My Secret World by Imagine. We've heard of Imagine Rock Star before, but the other three are new as of yesterday, and we had yet to see screens of Rock Star and its nonsensical drum kit. My Secret World is a diary program, including some scrapbook-type stuff and custom avatars. My Fashion Studio is precisely what it sounds like!

We've got galleries for Imagine Rock Star, Imagine Teacher, My Secret World, and My Fashion Studio, all visible after the break. You'll have to head over to IGN for videos of My Secret World and Imagine Teacher. The style of Teacher tells us right off that it's not for us (as if the Imagine name didn't do the trick), but we still think the implementation is inspired. As for the rest: My Secret World is almost incomprehensible, and My Fashion Studio is a paper doll simulator.



Read - My Secret World video
Read - Imagine Teacher video