French publishing giant Ubisoft has reduced its financial forecasts for the 2019/20 fiscal year by 33 per cent.
Reporting its results for the three months ending September 30th, the games firm brought its net booking prediction down from €2.2bn ($2.4bn) to €1.5bn ($1.7bn) due to the fact that three of its upcoming releases were being delayed into the next financial year.
Ubisoft revealed Watch Dogs Legion, Rainbow Six Quarantine and new IP Gods and Monsters were being pushed into the 2020/21 fiscal year for additional development time. All three games were announced at this year's E3.
Pushing these games out of the first three months of 2020 takes them out of the firing line of some pretty big hitters, including CD Projekt RED's eagerly-anticipated Cyberpunk 2077.
The reduction in predicted earnings wasn't just down to those three games needing some extra work; Ubisoft says that it was down to the recently-released Ghost Recon Breakpoint and The Division 2 being forecast to bring in less revenue than anticipated. CEO Yves Guillemot said that the former has had a "very disappointing" launch, but says that it will work to improve the game. Keep in mind that Ubisoft is the company that turned Rainbow Six: Siege's disappointing 2015 launch and transformed that game into an esports giant.
"Over the past few years, we have delivered many high-quality titles, built a portfolio of diversified franchises and successfully conducted the digital transformation of our business," Guillemot said.
"We have significantly grown our operations for PC, and in Asia and esports, and have further developed our Uplay platform. And we can now draw on a very robust back-catalog, which ended up again above our expectations in the second quarter, including the particularly outstanding momentum of Rainbow Six Siege and Assassin’s Creed Odyssey.
"However, we have not capitalized on the potential of our latest two triple-A releases. For Ghost Recon Breakpoint, while the game’s quality appeared on track – based on E3, Gamescom, previews and our latest internal playtests –, critical reception and sales during the game’s first weeks were very disappointing. As we have done with past titles, we will continue to support the game and listen to the community in order to deliver the necessary improvements."
