“Assassin’s Creed” maker Ubisoft struggles with delays in a glitchy gaming year
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The limits of parkour… French video-game maker Ubisoft is losing tons of experience points. This week the publisher announced it would delay its highly anticipated “Assassin’s Creed Shadows” game until next year. It also said sales of its blockbuster title “Star Wars Outlaws” disappointed. Ubisoft lowered its fiscal-year sales and profit outlook, and its shares sank to a decade low — down more than 60% in the past year.
We got not much before “GTA 6”… The “Assassin’s Creed” delay will cost Ubisoft an extra $22M, and the game will now drop in a year filled with major releases, including Take-Two’s “Grand Theft Auto 6” and Sony’s “Ghost of Yotei.”
Long level: Ubisoft’s other recent projects, like “Skull and Bones” and an “Avatar” game, have fallen short of expectations. In July it delayed two major mobile titles until next year.
Rough lobby: An activist investor said it’s gained support of 10% of Ubisoft’s shareholders to push for the board to sell the company or take it private.
A hard (mode) year… Since last year, game publishers have been slashing costs to cover growing production price tags (“GTA 6” has a rumored $2B budget). This year, several studios have been closed and an estimated 12.7K workers have been laid off from companies like Microsoft, EA, and Riot. That’s led to unionization pushes at studios including “Fallout” maker Bethesda. Capping things off, SAG-AFTRA’s now two-month strike against video-game companies expanded this week to “League of Legends.
It’s dangerous to go alone… Ubisoft is a major publisher but lacks the diversified revenue safety nets that larger rivals like Microsoft and Sony have. While it survived a wave of pandemic consolidation (Take-Two bought Zynga, Microsoft bought Activision Blizzard, and Sony bought Bungie), with further delays and investor pressure Ubisoft could struggle to remain a solo operation.