Ubisoft to Reduce Its Focus on AAA Games in the Coming Future

Ubisoft, the publisher behind Assassin’s Creed and Far Cry, has stated that it aims to reduce its reliance on AAA game titles. It will focus more on free-to-play games and its current back catalog to generate income.

Followed by a call talking about the company’s Q3 financial results, Ubisoft stated that they had three AAA titles planned for the fiscal year 2022 (April 2021 to March 2022), but wanted to shift focus away from such titles for its business model in the future.

CFO Frederick Duguet said on the call,

We said for a number of years that our normal template is to come with either three or four AAA games, so we’ll stick to that plan for fiscal 2022.

But we see that we are progressively, continuously moving from a model that used to be only focused on AAA releases to a model where we have a combination of strong releases from AAA and strong back catalog dynamics, but also complementing our program of new releases with free-to-play and other premium experiences.

CFO Frederick Duguet

He went on to state that the company had several AAA titles in the pipeline such as Far Cry 6, Rainbow Six Quarantine, Skull & Bones, Riders Republic and the Prince of Persia: Sands of Time remake. Guillemot also mentioned a previously announced Assassin’s Creed mobile game planned for a release in China with the aid of Tencent as the investor, which the CEO stated as being a part of the company ramping up investments in free-to-play games, especially on mobile. He said,

In fiscal 2022, we will continue our evolution from a AAA release-centric model toward a model where AAA stands alongside new premium and free-to-play innovative experiences across platforms. These diverse experiences will feed on each other through complementary gameplay and business models.

CFO Frederick Duguet

Ubisoft CEO Yves Guillemot stated that the company’s already released titles which are still bringing in revenue will play a much heavier role in the company’s finances in the future. Rainbow Six Siege, a six year old game now, added 15 million new players in the last 12 months, totalling to an incredible 70 million players since launch, and continues to make revenue for Ubisoft. Guillemot said,

We are continuing to move toward an increasingly pronounced recurrence of our revenues on the back of growing audiences. Therefore, we expect our highly-profitable back catalog to account for an even larger share of our business going forward.

Yves Guillemot

With released titles doing so well and a plan of a few major titles in the pipeline, Ubisoft definitely has the leeway to focus and expand on avenues which have otherwise not received enough attention. Here’s hoping that it means bigger and better games for us!