Ubisoft Delays Games Like Skull and Bones and Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora; Cancels 3 Others Due to Losses in 2022

Ubisoft seems to be in a tight spot at the moment. They have just released a press release, which confirmed the company’s dire financial year in 2022. In their efforts to save expenses, the French studio has also decided to delay certain games, as well as cancel 3 unannounced titles.

3 Unannounced Titles Sacked

Ubisoft has listed a set of measures that they will implement to bolster their ‘long-term growth’ and ‘value-creation prospects’. The first pointer states that they want to make sure all of their energy goes towards growing their brands and live services into the “some of the most powerful within the industry”.

For that reason, they made the decision to cancel the 3 unannounced titles, on top of the four they have since July 2022 which includes Splinter Cell, Prince of Persia, Tom Clancy titles and more. They have also decided to delay Skull and Bones again for a couple of months, and their statement gives a “early 2023-24” release window.

Also, they will be investing 500 million Euros into R&D for free-to-play titles as well as the projects they recently cancelled. This will make help them provide necessary focus towards fewer titles.

Mario + Rabbids: Sparks of Hope and Just Dance 2023 Disappoint

Yves Guillemot, Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Ubisoft also stated that they are clearly disappointed by the performance of the company. He added that the company was shocked by the underperformance of titles like Mario + Rabbids: Sparks of Hope and Just Dance 2023 in the last week of December 2022 and first week of January 2023.

Moreover, the company revised their Q3 2022-23 net bookings target from the original 830 million Euros, down to 725 million Euros. This is because of the underperformance of the earlier mentioned games. Their “non-IFRS operating income target” has been set for $400 million for 2023-24.

What to Expect from Ubisoft in 2023-24

Frédéric Duguet, Chief Financial Officer, provided a statement, through which we know titles such the company is developing Assassin’s Creed: Mirage, Avatar; Frontiers of Pandora, Skull and Bones, some other “yet-to-be-announced premium games”, which includes “promising” free-to-play games from their biggest brands.

Ubisoft definitely already did the rounds proposing acquisitions and mergers with other similar companies, and it mostly got laughed at. It’s just too unwieldy. Its strength was its distributed development structure, and now that is an albatross.

— Grubb (@JeffGrubb) January 11, 2023

In other news, Jeff Grubb has just tweeted about Ubisoft’s recent situation. He stated that Ubisoft has been through a series of situations where they proposed to acquire and merge with similar companies, and most of them were “laughed at”. He added saying that having this diverse structure was once its strength and it has now become its source of frustration.