Ubisoft Titles Pushed To Mid/Late 2008 News

After pouring over the Ubisoft financial reports for the first half of fiscal year 2007/08, it has become apparent that a few unnamed titles will be delayed until after April 1st (not a fool) 2008. Naturally, TVG got out its magnifying glass and performed some top class detective work.

There's one franchise title that has been pushed into a release during fiscal year 2008/09 (starting on April 1st 2008), which is likely to be Might & Magic (specifically the Dark Messiah title). Additionally, three new brands have been pushed to fiscal 2008/09; candidates for these delays include the untitled Shaun White Snowboarding game, and possibly two eagerly awaited TV series licensed games (Lost and Heroes).

Ubisoft also announced that six other franchises have been assigned release dates in the second half of fiscal 2007/08 ending March 31st 2008. These are Brothers In Arms (Hell's Highway and Road to Hill 30 on Wii), Far Cry (2), Rayman Raving Rabbids (2), The Settlers, and Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell (Conviction). These join three new brands that are also on track for the second half of 2007/08 - Haze, Assassin's Creed and Tom Clancy's End war - making for a particular stacked release schedule between now and the end of next March.

In other Ubisoft financial news, total sales are up 51.8% for the first half of this fiscal year compared to the same period in 2006/07 (from 172 million euros to 261 million euros). Additionally, the French games publisher also reported a halving of the total sales percentage that could be attributed to Xbox 360 games (from 28% to 15%), while PlayStation 3 titles accounted for 21% of total sales. However, much of this can be attributed to less Xbox 360 releases for Ubisoft in the last six months and a range of PlayStation 3 ports from previous Ubisoft Xbox 360 titles.

Yves Guillemot, CEO of Ubisoft stated "Ubisoft has turned in a very solid first-half showing and has continued to win market share on new-generation consoles. For the first 9 months of the 2007 calendar year Ubisoft was ranked 1 as the leading independent publisher for the Nintendo DS, as well as number 2 on Wii, number 3 for the PlayStation 3 system and PSP system and number 4 for the Xbox 360 system. The strong sales performance and our positioning on high gross margin consoles has lead to a sharp profitability improvement for the first half of 2007-08. Finally, we have a particularly strong games portfolio for the rest of the fiscal year and we expect to reap the benefits of the recent PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 hardware price reductions."

Ubisoft were also optimistic about the outlook for the company's full year financials of 2007/08: "In light of our first-half performance as well as the visibility for the second half, Ubisoft is confident of achieving its previously announced targets for full-year 2007-08, i.e. sales of approximately 825 million euros and current operating income before stock options representing at least 9% of sales."