Ghost Recon: Wildlands and rest of the portfolio help push Ubisoft Q1 sales up by 45%

By Stephany Nunneley

Ubisoft announced its Q1 results for fiscal year 2018, and once again, Tom Clancy titles The Division, Rainbow Six Siege and Ghost Recon Wildlands did the business along with back catalog sales.

The Division, Rainbow Six Siege, Ghost Recon Wildlands and other titles continue to do well for Ubisoft, as per the Q1 FY18 report, maintaining high player numbers off the back of the firm’s Q4 FY14 report.

During the period, Ghost Recon: Wildlands maintained its status as the “best-selling game” of 2017, according to Ubisoft, which was one of the main highlights from the firm’s Q4/year-end report earlier this year.

For year-end and the fourth quarter ending March 31, 2017, online Month Active Users (MAUs) increased 27%, and the aforementioned Tom Clancy games had 44 million unique registered players, an increase of 150% over 18 months.

While we’ll have to wait for today’s call to investors to end before gleaning any juicy details, Ubisoft co-founder and CEO Yves Guillemot noted in the release digital sales from the firm’s current offerings and back catalog helped push sales up by 45% (to €202.1 million). This was despite not having any major or new releases during Q1 for the fiscal year ending in 2018.

Digital revenue was up 55% to €162.4 million, up 80.4% compared to 75.3% year-over-year (yoy). Back-catalog sales came to €190.4 million, making up 94.3% of total sales compared to 91.1% yoy.

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The entire Ubisoft portfolio contributed to performance, according to the results.

Breaking down money spent on Ubisoft games by region, customers in Europe contributed 32%, North America 50% and the rest of the world made up 18% of sales for the quarter.

More titles from the firm were sold on PlayStation 4 than any other offering, with the latter making up 44% of sales. Xbox One sales were 22%, PC followed closely with 21%, “others” 11%, and last-gen systems contributed to 2% of sales.

We expect the firm will discuss some Assassin’s Creed: Origins news along with Far Cry 5 information during the call. Since South Park: The Fracture But Whole and The Crew 2 are coming later this year, it’s possible we’ll hear them mentioned in passing. Same with Mario + Rabbids Kingdom Battle.

It’s doubtful the company will discuss the triple-A title it has in development for fiscal year 2019, which starts in July 2018, but you never know: it could be alluded to or even teased a bit.

Check back on this post for updates later on.

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