Ubisoft’s Q1 revenues up 44% from last year at $153 million

[Deleted User]

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cameltosis

I'm steadily becoming a fan of Ubisoft. 

Whilst they suffer from sequel-itus like many big developers/publishers, they seem to consistently release solid games and haven't yet succumbed to fleecing their customers like some other big devs. They have a good range of games and do at least keep trying to progress the genre. 

So, I'm glad they're doing well, I hope they continue to do so!

Myria

DMKano said:

The Division was well marketed and many people bought it.

Out of my friends who biught it, I don't know of many who still play (only 1 guy still plays) it but they made their money via box sale so it doesn't matter much. 

I here the last DLC was good though.

I don't know as I'd say good, exactly. It did add a much-needed endgame activity not tied to the disastrous Dark Zone, but said activity suffers badly from the procedurally generated boredom issue. Everything rapidly starts feeling samey, not to mention that, as per usual, there are bugs galore. Add in a gear level gap problem the game has had from the start -- gear that drops from difficulty X often is only barely or outright isn't good enough to get you through level XX -- and it's still a bit of a mess.

It's an improvement, but, at least if my friends are any indication, not nearly enough of one to bring people back and keep them playing.

SEANMCAD

DMKano said:

The Division was well marketed and many people bought it.

Out of my friends who biught it, I don't know of many who still play (only 1 guy still plays) it but they made their money via box sale so it doesn't matter much. 

I here the last DLC was good though.

and there is the key

'most sales on day 1' usually means = we scammed the fuck out of these kids

goboygo

cameltosis said:

I'm steadily becoming a fan of Ubisoft. 

Whilst they suffer from sequel-itus like many big developers/publishers, they seem to consistently release solid games and haven't yet succumbed to fleecing their customers like some other big devs. They have a good range of games and do at least keep trying to progress the genre. 

So, I'm glad they're doing well, I hope they continue to do so!

Agreed, no F2P or cash shop garbage in their portfolio that I'm aware of.  I've always said F2P games are for developers that cant figure how to make an entire product that people are willing to pay for and instead build a husk of a game to setup their "item" store in.

ceratop001

I have no qualms with Ubisoft. Of course they are not perfect, but they have some decent games.

rojoArcueid

goboygo said:

no F2P or cash shop garbage in their portfolio that I'm aware of.

All/most their new AAA single player games have cash shops. Want to buy an awesome weapon in Assassins creed (not skin, actual weapon)? $20 bucks or 5 million in game currency (not actual prices, but they are as ridiculous as this sounds)... on a full priced retail game.

I have always liked Ubi thanks to Ghost Recon(the classic ones up until Advanced Warfighter 1), classic Splinter Cell, Prince of Persia, and Assassins Creed, but they do screw up massively sometimes.

[Deleted User]

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gervaise1

DMKano said:

The Division was well marketed and many people bought it.

Out of my friends who biught it, I don't know of many who still play (only 1 guy still plays) it but they made their money via box sale so it doesn't matter much. 

I here the last DLC was good though.

People no longer playing isn't in and of itself a bad thing. If they enjoyed it and moved on no problem. 

A new movie comes people see it and the week after they go and see a different film. Doesn't mean the first film was bad though. (Ok some saw Titanic more than once). 

One problem is people expecting to play a game "for ever" and then posting "I played game X for 8 months and it sucks". If a game is bad I don't stick around - you don't either.

At the end of the day it comes down to those difficult to pin down concepts of "value" and "worth". And "The Division" seems to have ticked those boxes for whilst good marketing can drive a products initial sales the best marketing in the world won't overcome a relentless torrent of "bad press, bad word of mouth etc".

Good results. Good news. And good for gamers.

(Edit: Not implying that The Division was "perfect")

SEANMCAD

gervaise1 said:

DMKano said:

The Division was well marketed and many people bought it.

Out of my friends who biught it, I don't know of many who still play (only 1 guy still plays) it but they made their money via box sale so it doesn't matter much. 

I here the last DLC was good though.

People no longer playing isn't in and of itself a bad thing. If they enjoyed it and moved on no problem. 

A new movie comes people see it and the week after they go and see a different film. Doesn't mean the first film was bad though. (Ok some saw Titanic more than once). 

One problem is people expecting to play a game "for ever" and then posting "I played game X for 8 months and it sucks". If a game is bad I don't stick around - you don't either.

At the end of the day it comes down to those difficult to pin down concepts of "value" and "worth". And "The Division" seems to have ticked those boxes for whilst good marketing can drive a products initial sales the best marketing in the world won't overcome a relentless torrent of "bad press, bad word of mouth etc".

Good results. Good news. And good for gamers.

(Edit: Not implying that The Division was "perfect")

The way these super AAA hyper hype games work is that most of the revenue comes in before the game is even released + day 1.

Then people play it for about 30 hours and leave.

To me there are two types of games.

1. a game that gives you an amazing mind blowing experience for a short peroid of time like sex or VR.
2. a game that lasts that you can really get your teeth into and explore the details and experiement with different outcomes and/or have long term 'hobby' like plans.

So to me in most cases playing on 30 hours and then moving on isnt a very good game, unless its porn or a VR experience

Myria

gervaise1 said:

People no longer playing isn't in and of itself a bad thing. If they enjoyed it and moved on no problem. 

The 'if' question aside, for the average game release, sure, you play, enjoy, and move on.

However, for MMO-lite games (The Division, Destiny, et al), or any multiplayer-reliant game (Evolve, Titanfall, Dead by Daylight, et al), empty servers mean a dead game. In the case of The Division and Destiny, these are games meant to go on for an extended period, they follow a similar strategy as MMOs do with periodic content drops, expacs, seasonal events, and microtransactions all meant to keep a steady stream of money coming in, which requires they keep people playing, bring in new players, and bring old players back.

Without people playing long-term, without a core playerbase and enough buzz and talk among gamers to bring in a steady stream of new players, these games die. Their endgames, both PvE and PvP, rely on having enough people on the servers to form groups. Bungie and Massive/Ubi have put a lot of time and money into these IPs, the last thing they want is to watch them die off before their respective ten (or whatever) year plans have come to fruition.

Bungie manged to mostly pull Destiny out of the early mess they created and have, somewhat to my surprise, managed to get the game to a point where it has a decently sizable loyal following (sadly several of my friends are in that camp). The Division is more-or-less where Destiny was around the time of The Dark Below.

Unfortunately for Massive/Ubi, they face some extra problems trying to pull The Division out of its hole. First, when Bungie was doing it with Destiny there wasn't a similar MMO-lite shooter for people to just go back to, but now there is. Sick of The Division's bugs, lack of content, and balance issues? Eh, let's play Destiny tonight instead. Yeah, it's not perfect, either, but there's way more content (now, anyway) and at least it mostly works. Also, Destiny's Crucible PvP mode is hugely popular among the playerbase. Personally I loathe it, but I can see why many like it. The Division's Dark Zone PvP isn't nearly as popular and has gotten less so as gear imbalances and various (often shockingly bad) changes have been made to the game have made what PvP occurs there increasingly asymmetric. Lastly, Destiny isn't hindered by a need to stick at least vaguely to the real-world (or, indeed, it's own lore or what fragments of story are left), meaning in trying to fix it they can pull more super-powers, light-magic, and uber pew-pew out of their arse with no one batting an eye. Because of their chosen setting, The Division is extremely limited as to how much of the player power-fantasy they can fulfill and what they can do as far as enemy variety.

Personally I'd like to see The Division manage to pick itself up out of the crater Massive/Ubi dumped it into. As things stand I don't have a lot of hope of that happening, though, at least not in time to bring back enough of the buzz and playerbase to matter in the long term.

In the short term The Division was an unqualified success. Before the game even launched they sold an arse-load of boxes and season passes. But given the time and cost required to create these kinds of IPs, MMO-lite games can't really be looked at just a matter of short-term box sales, any more than MMOs can, but instead with an eye to the long term health and income from the IP overall.

From that perspective it's too early to say whether The Division will be a success or not, but right now it's not looking so good.

gervaise1

Myria said:

gervaise1 said:

People no longer playing isn't in and of itself a bad thing. If they enjoyed it and moved on no problem. 

The 'if' question aside, for the average game release, sure, you play, enjoy, and move on.

However, for MMO-lite games (The Division, Destiny, et al), or any multiplayer-reliant game (Evolve, Titanfall, Dead by Daylight, et al), empty servers mean a dead game. In the case of The Division and Destiny, these are games meant to go on for an extended period, <snip>

From that perspective it's too early to say whether The Division will be a success or not, but right now it's not looking so good.

My comment was actually made in regard to the player experience. If a person feels they have had an "OK" time for a "reasonable" period then I don't see a problem. What is OK and whether a reasonable time is 10 hours, 30 or 200 varies between people.

From UbiSoft's perspective different factors obviously apply. And as you say greater retention will mean a greater potential for future DLC sales. Motivation to deliver a "solid" game followed by "solid" DLC. If we don't like it we won't / don't have to buy it. The better they do the greater their financial return. 

The initial sales were very solid though and even allowing for taxes, retailers taking a large percentage of non-online sales we can be reasonably sure that the initial outlay will have been recouped. Now whether they achieve or have already achieved the level of success they were aiming for (or the stretch targets) in the absence of any new numbers probably to early to say. One thing that will be working in their favour though is the level of online sales which, at over 75% (for all games) is huge. 

SEANMCAD

gervaise1 said:

Myria said:

gervaise1 said:

People no longer playing isn't in and of itself a bad thing. If they enjoyed it and moved on no problem. 

The 'if' question aside, for the average game release, sure, you play, enjoy, and move on.

However, for MMO-lite games (The Division, Destiny, et al), or any multiplayer-reliant game (Evolve, Titanfall, Dead by Daylight, et al), empty servers mean a dead game. In the case of The Division and Destiny, these are games meant to go on for an extended period, <snip>

From that perspective it's too early to say whether The Division will be a success or not, but right now it's not looking so good.

My comment was actually made in regard to the player experience. If a person feels they have had an "OK" time for a "reasonable" period then I don't see a problem. What is OK and whether a reasonable time is 10 hours, 30 or 200 varies between people.

From UbiSoft's perspective different factors obviously apply. And as you say greater retention will mean a greater potential for future DLC sales. Motivation to deliver a "solid" game followed by "solid" DLC. If we don't like it we won't / don't have to buy it. The better they do the greater their financial return. 

The initial sales were very solid though and even allowing for taxes, retailers taking a large percentage of non-online sales we can be reasonably sure that the initial outlay will have been recouped. Now whether they achieve or have already achieved the level of success they were aiming for (or the stretch targets) in the absence of any new numbers probably to early to say. One thing that will be working in their favour though is the level of online sales which, at over 75% (for all games) is huge. 

do you personally know anyone who with all honest feels 10 hours for a non-vr non-porn game is reasonable time frame or are we just assuming those people exist?

cameltosis

SEANMCAD said:

gervaise1 said:

Myria said:

gervaise1 said:

People no longer playing isn't in and of itself a bad thing. If they enjoyed it and moved on no problem. 

The 'if' question aside, for the average game release, sure, you play, enjoy, and move on.

However, for MMO-lite games (The Division, Destiny, et al), or any multiplayer-reliant game (Evolve, Titanfall, Dead by Daylight, et al), empty servers mean a dead game. In the case of The Division and Destiny, these are games meant to go on for an extended period, <snip>

From that perspective it's too early to say whether The Division will be a success or not, but right now it's not looking so good.

My comment was actually made in regard to the player experience. If a person feels they have had an "OK" time for a "reasonable" period then I don't see a problem. What is OK and whether a reasonable time is 10 hours, 30 or 200 varies between people.

From UbiSoft's perspective different factors obviously apply. And as you say greater retention will mean a greater potential for future DLC sales. Motivation to deliver a "solid" game followed by "solid" DLC. If we don't like it we won't / don't have to buy it. The better they do the greater their financial return. 

The initial sales were very solid though and even allowing for taxes, retailers taking a large percentage of non-online sales we can be reasonably sure that the initial outlay will have been recouped. Now whether they achieve or have already achieved the level of success they were aiming for (or the stretch targets) in the absence of any new numbers probably to early to say. One thing that will be working in their favour though is the level of online sales which, at over 75% (for all games) is huge. 

do you personally know anyone who with all honest feels 10 hours for a non-vr non-porn game is reasonable time frame or are we just assuming those people exist?

I know lots of people like that to be honest (I'm not one of them). 

Generally, they're split into 2 camps. The first is the cash-rich serial gamer. They have the money to splash on games and love gaming, but have so many games that they don't like getting stuck into a single one. So, a 10 hour, well delivered experience is perfect for them - they can get it, complete it over 2-4 days, then move on. Its almost like a fear of missing out on other good experiences, they want to experience EVERYTHING but don't have the time for 100+ hour games. 

The second tends to be the casual gamer with limited time (I'm thinking of the young dad types). They used to game a lot but have grown up, got families etc so don't have anywhere near enough time. So, a 10 hr game will take them 2-4 weeks to complete and they tend to only play a few games a year. 

SEANMCAD

cameltosis said:

SEANMCAD said:

gervaise1 said:

Myria said:

gervaise1 said:

People no longer playing isn't in and of itself a bad thing. If they enjoyed it and moved on no problem. 

The 'if' question aside, for the average game release, sure, you play, enjoy, and move on.

However, for MMO-lite games (The Division, Destiny, et al), or any multiplayer-reliant game (Evolve, Titanfall, Dead by Daylight, et al), empty servers mean a dead game. In the case of The Division and Destiny, these are games meant to go on for an extended period, <snip>

From that perspective it's too early to say whether The Division will be a success or not, but right now it's not looking so good.

My comment was actually made in regard to the player experience. If a person feels they have had an "OK" time for a "reasonable" period then I don't see a problem. What is OK and whether a reasonable time is 10 hours, 30 or 200 varies between people.

From UbiSoft's perspective different factors obviously apply. And as you say greater retention will mean a greater potential for future DLC sales. Motivation to deliver a "solid" game followed by "solid" DLC. If we don't like it we won't / don't have to buy it. The better they do the greater their financial return. 

The initial sales were very solid though and even allowing for taxes, retailers taking a large percentage of non-online sales we can be reasonably sure that the initial outlay will have been recouped. Now whether they achieve or have already achieved the level of success they were aiming for (or the stretch targets) in the absence of any new numbers probably to early to say. One thing that will be working in their favour though is the level of online sales which, at over 75% (for all games) is huge. 

do you personally know anyone who with all honest feels 10 hours for a non-vr non-porn game is reasonable time frame or are we just assuming those people exist?

I know lots of people like that to be honest (I'm not one of them). 

Generally, they're split into 2 camps. The first is the cash-rich serial gamer. They have the money to splash on games and love gaming, but have so many games that they don't like getting stuck into a single one. So, a 10 hour, well delivered experience is perfect for them - they can get it, complete it over 2-4 days, then move on. Its almost like a fear of missing out on other good experiences, they want to experience EVERYTHING but don't have the time for 100+ hour games. 

The second tends to be the casual gamer with limited time (I'm thinking of the young dad types). They used to game a lot but have grown up, got families etc so don't have anywhere near enough time. So, a 10 hr game will take them 2-4 weeks to complete and they tend to only play a few games a year. 

ok fair enough, I dont come across that in my universe.

I should be clear when I say 'know' I mean as in you know at least their names. again trying to remove away from abstraction and assumptions

cameltosis

SEANMCAD said:

cameltosis said:

SEANMCAD said:

gervaise1 said:

Myria said:

gervaise1 said:

People no longer playing isn't in and of itself a bad thing. If they enjoyed it and moved on no problem. 

The 'if' question aside, for the average game release, sure, you play, enjoy, and move on.

However, for MMO-lite games (The Division, Destiny, et al), or any multiplayer-reliant game (Evolve, Titanfall, Dead by Daylight, et al), empty servers mean a dead game. In the case of The Division and Destiny, these are games meant to go on for an extended period, <snip>

From that perspective it's too early to say whether The Division will be a success or not, but right now it's not looking so good.

My comment was actually made in regard to the player experience. If a person feels they have had an "OK" time for a "reasonable" period then I don't see a problem. What is OK and whether a reasonable time is 10 hours, 30 or 200 varies between people.

From UbiSoft's perspective different factors obviously apply. And as you say greater retention will mean a greater potential for future DLC sales. Motivation to deliver a "solid" game followed by "solid" DLC. If we don't like it we won't / don't have to buy it. The better they do the greater their financial return. 

The initial sales were very solid though and even allowing for taxes, retailers taking a large percentage of non-online sales we can be reasonably sure that the initial outlay will have been recouped. Now whether they achieve or have already achieved the level of success they were aiming for (or the stretch targets) in the absence of any new numbers probably to early to say. One thing that will be working in their favour though is the level of online sales which, at over 75% (for all games) is huge. 

do you personally know anyone who with all honest feels 10 hours for a non-vr non-porn game is reasonable time frame or are we just assuming those people exist?

I know lots of people like that to be honest (I'm not one of them). 

Generally, they're split into 2 camps. The first is the cash-rich serial gamer. They have the money to splash on games and love gaming, but have so many games that they don't like getting stuck into a single one. So, a 10 hour, well delivered experience is perfect for them - they can get it, complete it over 2-4 days, then move on. Its almost like a fear of missing out on other good experiences, they want to experience EVERYTHING but don't have the time for 100+ hour games. 

The second tends to be the casual gamer with limited time (I'm thinking of the young dad types). They used to game a lot but have grown up, got families etc so don't have anywhere near enough time. So, a 10 hr game will take them 2-4 weeks to complete and they tend to only play a few games a year. 

ok fair enough, I dont come across that in my universe.

I should be clear when I say 'know' I mean as in you know at least their names. again trying to remove away from abstraction and assumptions

Yeh, I know personally. 

I'm 30 years old, so a lot of my gamer friends from my childhood and from uni now fall into these two camps. Most are in the young dads kinda category (though, in a lot of cases, they just have girlfriends who don't appreciate gaming and so can't get the time to game) but a few are in the cash-rich serial gamer category too.