Mobile saw substantial growth in Ubisoft’s results for the 2018 to 2019 financial year ending March 31st 2019.

2019 marked another record year for the French publisher and while that came largely down to enduring PC and console titles, Ubisoft’s handheld offerings grew significantly.

Mobile net bookings soared 73 per cent to reach  €153.2 million ($171.m), making it one of the fastest growing sectors for the publisher.

Overall net bookings meanwhile hit €2.03 billion ($2.2bn) - a 17.1 per cent annual increase. Non-IFRS operating income grew 49 per cent to hit  €446m ($498.6m)

While Ubisoft’s mobile offering is still a very small part of its overall operation, Ubisoft believes mobile will be a core part of fundamental shifts in the gaming landscape in the near-future.

“Major changes will be driven in large part by the growing success of console and PC franchises on mobile and the advent of cloud gaming,” said CEO Yves Guillemot.

“The latter will allow for, among other things, appealing multi-screen offerings and the creation of amazing new experiences that make use of unprecedented technological capacities.”

Fully booked

The bulk of Ubisoft’s strong performance this year came from keeping older games alive, rather than any single new release.

Bookings for games in Ubisoft’s back catalogue were overwhelmingly strong, accounting for 56.5 per cent of total bookings at $1.28bn (€1.15bn). That marks a 39 per cent increase over last year.

But it’s new technologies like streaming and cloud tech that excite Ubisoft. The publisher was on board with Google Stadia long before its announcement and hopes opening the floodgates to new users will explode their audience size.

“The video games industry is at the dawn of a deep-seated transformation, which, as barriers between platforms and between geographic regions continue to disappear, should allow us to reach five billion players over the coming ten years," said Guillemot.