Ubisoft’s recent financials for the full year of 2022-2023 reveal a poor outlook for the French company, with sales down at least 56.1% to €310.7 year-on-year.
Net bookings were also down by 52.8% to €313.2m, reflecting equally low performance in their Q3 financials last year. The company also highlighted that the hotly anticipated Rainbow Six Mobile title would start a six-week closed beta on June 6, as well as further upcoming testing for The Division Resurgence, the mobile version of the Division franchise.
Further cost cutting measures were also announced. CFO Frédérick Duguet clarified, “We continue to work on our cost reduction plan of at least 200 million euros over the next 2 years.”
CEO and co-founder Yves Guillemout added his own thoughts in a statement “FY2022-23 was in line with our revised financial targets. While this past year was challenging for the industry and for Ubisoft, it was pivotal for the Company as we reinforced our strategic focus on our biggest opportunities, initiated a meaningful cost reduction plan and provided additional development time for our strong pipeline of content.
“As part of our progressive reallocation of resources, we plan to increase the number of talents working on the Assassin’s Creed brand by 40% over the coming years. Our teams are making headway across the board as we look to bring exciting gaming experiences, both premium and free-to-play, to players on all platforms in FY2023-24 and beyond.”
Cutting costs
The announcement of further cost-cutting is no surprise, but it does indicate a potentially gloomy outlook for Ubisoft in the near-future. The company has already made significant cuts to its workforce, however we may be seeing a greater emphasis on physical locations this time as previously European regional distribution centres fell victim to cuts. However, the financials also confirmed that Ubisoft were looking to expand their customer relations centres in the UK and US.
The upcoming mobile releases for Ubisoft will mark some of their franchise’s first entries onto the mobile market, and in a vibrant esports scene hungry for competitive, accessible titles, may prove to be the shot in the arm the company needs. But for those worried about redundancy measures, cost-cutting on the scale that was announced is unlikely to inspire confidence.
