Ubisoft Brings In Big Numbers From Digital Sales

Ubisoft recently held its latest earnings report call, and, aside from announcing a few new titles for the year, it indicated that it had a terrific year, with digital-based video games leading the way.

The company noted that digital sales have done quite well, with 50 percent of total sales made from the games, and CEO Yves Guillemot giving praise to certain franchises for doing well in that department, including the Tom Clancy games like Rainbow Six Siege and Ghost Recon Wildlands.

"With 44 million registered players, the size of the Tom Clancy community has increased by almost 150 percent in less than 18 months," Guillemot explained. "This impressive performance for a brand created almost 20 years ago clearly illustrates the strong popularity of Ghost Recon Wildlands, Rainbow Six Siege and The Division. Our Live titles continue to beat records for player engagement and have seen a sharp rise in player recurring investment. Our results for 2016-2017 demonstrate the success of our new model, with record high operating income and outperforming the target announced a year ago, and operating margin up for the third consecutive year."

The updating of Live games, such as The Division and The Crew, with their regular updates, have proven that business can be made not just from new releases, but consistently updated ones. Siege, a game that had come out a while back, actually saw a boost in audience for the start of 2017, thanks to new content introduced for the game.

In addition, Steep, a new franchise for the company, also fared pretty well, though specific sales numbers weren't given.

The company is also quite optimistic with the Nintendo Switch, with games like Rayman Legends and Steep on the way, and more likely to be announced soon, as it has the "potential to reach a wide audience," according to Ubisoft CFO Alain Martinez. He also noted that Ubisoft was one of the top third-party companies for Nintendo, a title it was looking to maintain.

Ubisoft also noted that it's the number one publisher worldwide when it comes to physical and digital game sales on console and PC, with Ghost Recon Wildlands being the top-seller for the year thus far, followed by the medieval combat game For Honor.

With a number of big titles lined up, and support still going for some of its bigger hits, it doesn't look like Ubisoft is going to lose momentum anytime soon.