It seems that despite the various attempts made to get up, Ubisoft is still in the midst of one of the darkest periods ever experienced by the company. Only in the last few hours has the company revealed that it has postponed Skull and Bones for the sixth time in a row, the highly anticipated title that will take players to sail the seven seas. At the same time as the announcement of the postponement of the new IP, another piece of news also arrived. In fact, three other unannounced games would have ended up in the trash following a reorganization of resources. As if that weren’t enough, the publisher got to talk about in its latest financial report Mario + Rabbids: Sparks of Hope and the situation would not be the best.
According to Ubisoft, the new Mario adventure – in terms of public and critical reception – would have achieved excellent results. Despite this, in the last weeks of 2022 sales of the game would instead have recorded negative results for the company.
“Despite excellent reviews from critics and excellent reception from players, in addition to an ambitious marketing plan, we were surprised by the negative results of Mario + Rabbids: Sparks of Hope made between the last weeks of 2022 and early January. Just Dance 2023 has also followed the same path“.
For the French giant, the presence of “mega-brands and long-form titles“. In this regard, Yves Guillemot, CEO of Ubisoft, has provided an interesting statement. “In times of great pressure, people will always choose all the bigger brands over the lesser known ones. We have seen some contraction in overall consumer spending over this period due to the current economic environment and inflation. This has led to major mega-brands and live services grabbing more market share, leaving less consumer spending available for other products. This is the conclusion we have come to. We noticed that there are other high-quality titles that underperformed“.
Subsequently Ubisoft explains that in the last four years hworked hard to bring flagship titles like Assassin’s Creed to follow these new market dynamics. Unfortunately, however, these names imported to the company have not yet come out. It will therefore still take some time to see if the one undertaken by Ubisoft is the way to get the company back on track once and for all.
Source: ubisoft