Ubisoft Sees ‘Benefits’ From 3DS, Move, Kinect, CEO Says

The Nintendo 3DS and the PlayStation Move and Xbox 360 Kinect motion control systems are “great news for the casual market” that Ubisoft will “strongly benefit from,” Yves Guillemot, the publisher’s CEO, said in a Monday earnings call. He predicted that Nintendo, Sony and Microsoft will “put lots of promotion behind” the initiatives, giving the industry overall a lift.

Ubisoft announced six games in development so far for the 3DS: Hollywood 61 (code name), Battle of Giants: Dinosaur Strike, Driver Renegade, Assassin’s Creed: Lost Legacy, Tom Clancy’s Splinter Cell Chaos Theory and Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon. But “we will have even more” than that for the 3DS, said Guillemot. The company “could have up to 10 games available for this fiscal year” on Nintendo’s coming handheld game system, said Chief Financial Officer Alain Martinez. The 3DS, which achieves 3D effects without the need to wear any special glasses, will ship by the end of Nintendo’s fiscal year in March. Ubisoft is the No. 1 third-party publisher on the DS platform, it said. Nintendo should be able to “leverage the huge excitement that was created around” the 3DS at E3 last month, Guillemot said.

Ubisoft will also field 3D versions of Ghost Recon: Future Soldier and Shaun White Skateboarding for unspecified home consoles, Martinez said, repeating what the publisher disclosed at E3 (CED June 16 p1). “It’s a doable thing to have 3D games. It’s just that” the extra cost to make 3D games for the home consoles means that “before you do it for 10 or 20 games you need to have a broad enough market,” he said. Ubisoft, therefore, will start with “a couple of games and as the market evolves we will bring it to more games in the future,” Martinez said.

"I think we will see lots of bundles with 3D monitors or 3D TVs” but “they will be small sales in game stores,” said Guillemot. He said, “It will be very strong … at the end of next year, which means November, December next year.” That should “be the time when we will start to see very good sales on those products,” he said. The company’s “goal is to make sure most of our high-end games will use 3D,” it said.

Ubisoft estimated that sales for Q1 ended June 30 came in “above target” at 160 million euros, a 93 percent increase from Q1 last year, thanks in part to strong demand for its latest Splinter Cell game, it said. The publisher had projected it would report sales of about 145 million euros for Q1.

Ubisoft shipped 1.9 million units of the new release Splinter Cell: Conviction, its best-selling game in Q1, Guillemot said. On the catalog side, the company shipped about 800,000 copies of Just Dance and about 350,000 units of Avatar in Q1, boosting each title’s life-to-date sales to 3.7 million and more than 3 million, respectively, he said. Just Dance’s performance was the best-ever for a third-party game on the Wii, he said. Ubisoft also saw a gain of about 9 million euros in Q1 from “the favorable exchange rate,” it said.

Initial pre-orders for the coming game Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood are “the strongest ever seen” for that franchise and are “already 20 percent above those from the same period last year” for the prior game in that series, said Guillemot.

Ubisoft plans to report final Q1 sales results after the close of the Paris stock exchange July 22, and it won’t hold another earnings call then, it said. It expects to report Q2 sales of about 83 million euros, about flat with Q2 revenue last year, it said. Q2 releases will include H.A.W.X. 2 for the PC, PS3 and Xbox 360, and R.U.S.E. for the same platforms. Ubisoft, meanwhile, thinks it will sell more than 1 million copies of the Michael Jackson game it announced at E3, said Martinez. That title will ship for multiple platforms this holiday season.

The publisher also disclosed that it delayed the release of Driver from Q3 until Q4 of its fiscal year “due to the competitive market at Christmas.” Ubisoft still expects to return to profitable growth and positive cash flow from operating activities for this fiscal year, it said.