Maybe you’re wondering why Ubisoft is releasing yet another Assassin’s Creed — and the answer to that question is that it makes the company a ton of money.
The French publisher reported $1.63 billion in revenues for its fiscal 2015, which came to an end March 31. That’s up from $1.12 billion in fiscal 2014. The company also generated a profit of $125.8 million, which is up in a major way from fiscal 2014’s net loss of $55 million. Ubisoft directly credits its major triple-A releases with helping it land a profit. Console gaming is worth approximately $55 billion between software and hardware, and Ubisoft is one of the few major publishers left going after that space.
Ubisoft went big during its fiscal 2015. It released both a new Assassin’s Creed and Far Cry as well as Watch Dogs, which is an entirely new property. And while one of the Assassin’s Creed games and Watch Dogs met with some critical friction, all three franchises ended 2014 in the top seven best-selling game of the year (if you combine Assassin’s Creed: Unity’s and Rogue’s sales), according to the publisher.
Both gamers and critics were lukewarm toward Watch Dogs despite a huge amount of pre-release hype for the open-world hacking game. Assassin’s Creed: Unity, however, was trashed by many gamers for bugs that caused the open-world action adventure to break for many people. This led many to speculate whether either release was as successful as Ubisoft was anticipating. We still don’t know if those games reached the publisher’s expectations, but the success of Ubisoft’s “big three” clearly helped the company capture an increased market share. It owned 12.8 percent of software sales on consoles during its fiscal 2015.
Looking ahead, Ubisoft expects another big year for its fiscal 2016.
“We have another very high-quality line-up for [fiscal 2016],” Ubisoft chief executive officer Yves Guillemot said in a statement. “Thanks to these new releases, very solid back-catalog, digital revenues, and favorable exchange rates, we expect to see a further improvement in profitability.”
The company is expecting an operating income of $225 million for fiscal 2016. That’s compared to an operating income of $191 million for fiscal 2015.
Ubisoft will continue to ride on the success of Assassin’s Creed and Just Dance through this year. Guillemot’s company also confirmed that The Division will launch during Ubisoft’s fourth quarter, which runs from January through March 2016.