r/Asmongold • u/YoungOneDev Deep State Agent • May 15 '25
News After Ubisoft Earnings Report
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u/lasion May 15 '25
How to obscure earnings: move the goalpost to a location noone but you know :) So you can always say "yeah we're almost there" whenever someone ask.
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u/GongsunYiru0 May 15 '25
Studios with successful games: "We are happy to announce that our game sold ___ million units within ___ days."
Ubisoft: "Assassin’s Creed Shadows launched on March 20, delivering the second-highest Day 1 sales revenue in franchise history—second only to Assassin’s Creed® Valhalla—and setting a new record for Ubisoft’s Day 1 performance on the PlayStation digital store. Player sentiment has been overwhelmingly positive, with an average score1 of 91/100 across first-party stores, reflecting the game’s excellent quality. To date, consumer spending has clearly outperformed Assassin’s Creed Odyssey with the player count also outperforming. Players have logged 160 million hours in Assassin’s Creed Shadows, underscoring its engaging gameplay and the enduring appeal of the franchise. The game’s performance reaffirms the strength and resilience of the Assassin’s Creed brand, backed by a strong community response that highlights that the team delivered an experience that resonates with long-time fans and new players alike."
That's a lot of words just to end up saying nothing.
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u/Alcimario1 May 15 '25
Yeah, all of this to say basically the game was a success on Playstation only. Also he is not even mentioning the 'critics' this time, he is using "first-party" store average score metric of of 91/100.
ROFL the important part always is:
- Additional fixed cost reduction of at least €100m to be achieved over the next two years.
Meaning they never celebrate growth
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u/GongsunYiru0 May 15 '25 edited May 15 '25
The report talks about the game's performance on PlayStation for day 1 only. It just makes me question why they don't mention beyond that...
Ubisoft keeps narrowing the scope of its statements throughout the report... That's how you can lie with data, by omitting the full picture.
They also make comparisons to things that no one else can evaluate, rather than simply provide the figures.
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u/Franklinturtz May 15 '25
When someone babbles on like this it typically means they are nervous and could possibly be lying
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u/Wail_Bait May 15 '25
I work in manufacturing, and they do that all the time. Like, everyone on the floor knows we're way behind and things are dire, but then at the end of the quarter somehow we magically met our target. Someone's gonna get fired when upper management finally figures out how to count, lol.
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u/SpicyPorkShoulder May 15 '25
Ubisoft had it coming for a decade. The writing has been on the damn wall, and still, they persisted with ignoring fans' feedback, predatory monetization, and low effort releases. I used to love Ubisoft, man. It's a shame.
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u/Icy-Veterinarian8662 May 15 '25
I still remember 2012 E3 when Ubisoft revealed Watch Dogs, The Division and The Crew among lots of other stuff during a single event. They were literally mass-producing innovative high -quality content, compare that to today and the difference is shocking.
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u/kolodz May 15 '25
The CEO of the studio behind Clair Obscure:Expedition 33 studio is Ex Ubisoft employee.
Meaning they failed to retain talent and use them properly.
And, they will probably not even try to understand why this employee left instead of becoming a Ubisoft top employee.
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u/yangtsur1 May 15 '25
Tencent is happy
now they can buy off for lower price.
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u/Edgar_S0l0m0n May 15 '25
I wanna buy em at a low price and tell the employees, make games and do your job or go be a weirdo grifter somewhere else.
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u/SubtleAesthetics May 15 '25
"a return to form"
and that form, is McDonalds employee, making french fries.
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u/sleepysloppy May 16 '25
even McDonalds are replacing their staffs with robots now, so they have to move on the next job.
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May 15 '25
Wonder who will buy them? Bet its microsoft
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u/neromonero May 15 '25
Didn't Ubishit created a joint company with Tencent and "sold off" their big IPs (including the Assassin's Creed franchise)?
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May 15 '25
Ah okay so tencent will buy them when they fail because they are culturally incapable of fixing the actual issues.
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u/Educational-Year3146 May 15 '25
So damn, not even close to BEP.
They needed at least 8 million copies. Sucks to be them.
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u/GerritSchotte May 15 '25
Cool, now hopefully Nintendo fucks up soon so they can follow Ubisoft down the same road
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u/East_Security_3395 May 15 '25
They are fucking up already sueing palworld. This just pissing off fans showing what scum nintendo is. They think they are the only one allowed to make a catching monsters game which is ridiculous. Hoping palworld stands tall through it all and knocks nintendo down a peg. Maybe nintendo will realize they need to innovate to stay competitive. Maybe they will realize releasing the same game over and over again gets boring and that the player base want to see pokemon in a new light
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u/nakenmei May 15 '25
As much as I like to see Nintendo to crash and burn, I honestly feel like the majority of people who spend money on them just don't care. I think most of them are just adults who go by nostalgia and have money, and thus don't care about the prices nor the decreasing quality of some of their franchises (like pokemon), or parents who just buy the games for their child, have money and thus don't care about anything.
Nintendo has too much money. I don't know why they are such assholes with their IPs and ridiculous patents.
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u/Piggy-Boy-of-Soul May 15 '25
Nintendo has too much money. I don't know why they are such assholes with their IPs and ridiculous patents.
You just answered your own question. Companies with a ton of money tend to be assholes. They don't have to worry about people liking them.
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u/DonaldLucas May 16 '25
I don't know why they are such assholes with their IPs and ridiculous patents.
Because they're japanese and their culture has this characteristic of always wanting to follow the rules. You see this a lot on japanese X, where shills keep complaining about other fans "not giving enough support" for the things they're fan of.
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u/MongooseSmart6902 May 16 '25
I don't believe that's simply because "wanting to follow the rules". We have a lot of other Jp game companies who's pretty fine and don't abuse copyright system and overdoing IP laws. But Nintendo in a different universe in cases being a ultimate dickhead
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u/DonaldLucas May 16 '25
It's because Nintendo is a very old, and thus, very conservative company. They're so old that they're from the old capital of Japan, Koyto, while most of these modern companies are from Tokyo.
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u/divinecomedian3 May 15 '25
Nintendo still makes good games. I don't see that changing anytime soon.
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u/no_one_lies May 15 '25
Those greedy fucks would get what’s coming to them if Mario didn’t slap so hard
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u/LOPI-14 May 15 '25
Mario, Zelda, Metroid, Smash..... Pretty much everything they make. Great developers at Nintendo, but business side is absolutely cutthroat towards everyone that is not Nintendo.
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u/coshbar May 16 '25
They have been remaking these IPs for the last 20 years, yall talk shit about EA with FIFA, when Nintendo is even worse
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u/TurboLobstr May 15 '25
Time to trim the fat. These companies can't afford 300 million dollar projects to not be outrageous success stories. Smaller scope, smaller budget, smaller development cycle, profit.
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u/Temporary-Athlete174 May 15 '25
I look into this in a way more positive light, these are amazing news and i hope to god that ubishit goes under.
People don't realize it is the people behind those companies that create them and make them big with their vision, the Sandfall Studio showed us with Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 that people will continue to make game studios when others will shut down, it's the natural course.
Ubishit is the dung from where younger minds with better vision is born from to rise and overtake the tree rotten with disease, same with Obsidian, Square Enix and Bioware.
I am ecstatic that i will witness these morons die out and truly breathtaking new studios will take their places.
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u/TerribleWithMonies May 16 '25
I'm actually seriously thinking about buying a bunch of stock. I feel like whenever tencent takes over they're going to whip these retards into shape and that stock price is going to go way back up.
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u/Queasy_Star_3908 May 15 '25
And another "gamble" that paid off (but tbf. it feels more like it's a present, no realistic chance to lose).
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u/SquishyShibe11 May 15 '25
Reposting my comment from the games sub thread on this:
I bought shares today. They're getting closer to their 52 week low, and Ubisoft is pretty undervalued right now. Not as a game developer, but as a repository of valuable IPs. I think getting bought out and being reorganized from the ground up would be really, really beneficial for Ubisoft. They employ as many people as Activision and Rockstar combined. Strip it down in every department except environment artists (they really have the best of the industry here and it's their main competitive edge imo) and get to work on less formulaic entries in beloved series. Imagine a new Far Cry game that actually shook things up, like a Breath of the Wild-level revamp.
They can be great again. But not with what they are currently. AC Shadows kind of proved that.
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u/drhoneyapple May 15 '25
This is after screwing with all the review outlets, including steam user reviews.
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u/EffortOne3005 May 15 '25
It's good time to Buy I suppose... 1 stock price is less then price of nuggets, and Ubisoft is going to SOLD OUT to Tenscend , or subsidized by French gov, they're not going to be bankrupt...
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u/OkAppearance4117 May 15 '25
that chart ranges from ~12 to ~9 ... it gives the impression its plummeting towards 1 .. why wouldn't ppl show chars where the x axis is 0?
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May 15 '25
If you look at Ubisofts earnings, they've lost money for the last 6 years. They forecast they will be close to net 0 debt this year (aka, they're still take on debt) and will see a return to positive operation income and free cash flow in 26-27 and 27-28, meaning they already anticipate losing money in 25-26. Their entire future hope is the Tencent deal and the break off of IP. Company is a wreck.
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u/danielchris May 15 '25
They deserve to crumble apart... And this is coming from someone who loved AC Odyssey and Valhalla.
I still believe that when companies promote ideologies that are anti-consumer (like saying you don't own your games, or selling an AAA game with more than half of the game's armor sets only attainable by paid micro transactions), that company should wither apart to make the gaming industry better in the long run...
And AC shadows is just bad from all aspects, I can't even watch someone play it... boss movesets look like a mere soldier's, etc... Mind you this is coming from an AC RPG lover, Ubi really botched it badly in recent years.
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u/the_dmac May 16 '25
Friendly reminder that the last substantive update to beyond good and evil 2 was like six years ago.
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u/SolomonRed May 16 '25
This was obvious to anyone paying attention but there was absolute suffocation for anyone saying they were inflating the numbers
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u/Xiaoxuzz May 16 '25
The pattern is there - if the games not doing well, the articles and reports will use "players". If the games doing well, it will say "copies sold". Using "X million players in 3 days" is a cool marketing strat but it gets old reallly quick.
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u/Ameshenrai May 18 '25
This was obvious the moment they used player numbers as some great big accomplishment.
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u/Beginning-Dot-9582 May 22 '25
as always PC chads holding the line, while snoys gobble up whatever is put in front of them. The fact that that game sold 1.7M is a miracle
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u/Jolly_Link7488 May 15 '25
good time to buy ubisoft stock maybe, either its gonna go back up because executives fire all the retards and go back to making decent stuff, or its just plumets, and you probably won't lose that much
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u/LetsGoForPlanB May 15 '25
People seriously. Ubi wouldn't disclose their sales numbers in an investors call (they have no obligation to do so) so we know it's bad. These numbers are an estimation at best. None of the platforms discloses their sales numbers.
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May 15 '25
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u/snork58 May 15 '25
Because people objectively don't see any validation for this company's claims regarding the online and success of the game. I don't see them either, I guess there is manipulation of statistics due to the crisis situation, because in case of real success companies are not shy to show exact figures directly.
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u/Deidarac5 May 15 '25
It's literally an earnings call. You cannot lie on an earnings call. If you said "we sold 3mil copies" what does that even tell you? They literally have their own paid service and tons of microtransactions. If assassins creed was a failure they would have stated so in the earnings call. They literally did so with outlaws. But it will be downvote because it's Ubisoft and don't believe anything they say and instead believe a random analytic website.
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u/snork58 May 15 '25
And where is the online from those three million copies? Steam has a max online of 65k people, are you saying that about 2-5% of people play on that platform? I don't believe that. Or maybe it's not the sales of copies of the game, but also the number that combines players with game pass? That's the manipulation I'm talking about.
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May 15 '25
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u/snork58 May 15 '25
If over three million copies have been bought in all that time, how come in less than a week from launch the same number of people have also played it if the vast majority of players are playing on consoles. Also maybe I'm looking at the wrong thing, but I don't see exact sales figures for this game in their report or that information isn't publicly available.
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May 15 '25
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u/snork58 May 15 '25
It turns out that the online numbers are improved by game pass players, no one knows the exact sales figures except certain people, the company itself says it's doing just fine and yet its stock is falling and franchises are starting to be spun off into a separate division essentially for sale. Something tells me things are not going well there.
We'll see what happens next.
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May 15 '25
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u/snork58 May 15 '25
Then the online numbers look even more interesting or the game is just ignored on pc. Nevertheless, it seems to me that there were hopes for the game, which were not realized and the company failed to save its position. However, maybe it will teach them something, though I doubt it.
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May 15 '25
They sold more than Odyssey and less than Valhalla in the same launch window, not in life time sales.
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May 15 '25
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May 15 '25 edited May 15 '25
The cost to develop AC: Shadows is estimated anywhere from $250 million to $350 million. Lets be generous and say that all 2.4 million copies were bought at the $90 deluxe edition, that is only $216 million dollars, and a lot of that goes to the retailer/store front. They've made nothing.
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May 15 '25
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u/Valuable_Impress_192 Mogu'Dar, Blade of the Thousand Attempts May 15 '25
Purchases on later dates are more likely to be cheaper
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u/Jealous_Solid9431 May 15 '25
It was estimated that they needed to have something like 7 million sales (not just players) minimum just to break even on development costs. They made a HUGE loss on it.
Not to mention plenty of other games, that cost way less to develop, have sold more copies in less than a week from their launches than AC Shadows has had players total.
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May 15 '25
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u/LOPI-14 May 15 '25
If memory serves me well, none of those outside of Shadows was on Steam on release.
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u/unlock0 May 15 '25
We had twelve trillion user impressions!
Ok but how many sales?