What’s Ahead for Ubisoft? Watch Dogs 2 & “New AAA IP”

“Top 4” video game company Ubisoft released their FY16 Earnings presentation today. You can check it out here if you want the cold hard numbers to crunch, but here’s a general summary of the highlights withing the slideshow presentation.

The biggest point of interest is Ubisoft’s confidence in their upcoming games.  They expect that continuation of video game series like Watch Dogs and South Park will spur interest in previously released titles. We can expect release dates for these upcoming titles at E3, along with Ghost Recon and For Honor. It’s unknown whether or not this new IP mentioned in the report will be announced just yet.

 

One of the early things the slideshow talks about is Ubisoft’s focus on open world games. Within the past 8 years, the total market share of open world games has grown at a steady rate. Ubisoft thinks this trend will continue, and they can capitalize on it by developing big projects simultaneously, along with a focus on strong post launch operations.

They later claim that only Ubisoft can deliver open worlds on a regular basis, citing 8 different products in the past three years demonstrating that. While EA’s Dragon Age and Activison’s Destiny are strong offerings, Ubisoft is trying to say that they’re the only consistent company that can routinely release this type of game.

Ubisoft makes the point that The Division, Watch Dogs, and Assassins Creed hold 3 out of 4 of the top spots for “Biggest New IP Launches Ever”. Going on to state that The Division and Rainbow Six Siege had strong execution for multiplayer offerings, resulting in a strong recurring digital revenue stream.

They point out a noticeable growth in recurring player investment in that area, stating that money stream is expected to continue increasing over the next few years (they define “Recurring Player investment” as in-game items, DLC, subscriptions, and advertising). The six percent increase in digital revenue shows a continuing decline in the physical share of the video game market.

The last thing of note in the presentation was Ubisoft expressing their desire for the Assassins Creed movie to be a success in theaters.