Ubisoft announced that it will abandon its strategy of publishing 3-4 AAA games each year and adopt the way to develop “high quality, free to play” games for all its major series. The firm’s financial year meeting said it would update its game development strategy, while they will now be less dependent on AAA games.
Frederick Duguet, CFO of Ubisoft, said, “We are now leaving behind our focus on publishing 3-4 high-end AAA games every year. This is no longer an accurate indicator of our value creation dynamics. For example, our expectations of Just Dance and Riders Republic are similar to the industry’s AAA games. In addition, we will develop high-quality, free-to-play games in the long run.”
This, of course, does not mean that Ubisoft AAA is giving up games, but that will no longer be their main focus. Again, we can expect 1-2 AAA games a year, but it seems that the staggering numbers that some other major studios have earned from F2P games have also attracted Ubisoft. They had already signaled this change with the recently announced Tom Clancy’s The Division: Heartland.
However, there is information that investors do not like this statement. Asked if the decline in revenues from the reduction in the number of AAA games could be met with F2P games, Duguet was asked.
Ubisoft aims to release Far Cry 6, Rainbow Six Quarantine, Riders Republic, The Division Heartland and Roller Champions in the fiscal year ending March 31, 2022.
