It's a dark time for RTS (unless your name is Starcraft)
Ubisoft's delayed Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon Future Soldier and Driver San Francisco.
Both games were due to be released some time in the first three months of 2011. Now, they are included in Ubisoft's 2011-12 line-up, which runs from the beginning of April 2011 to the end of March 2012.
No explanation was provided by the French company in its first-half 2010-11 financial results.
It did say, however, that H.A.W.X. 2 and R.U.S.E. "performed below expectations".
For the first six months of the financial year, Ubisoft made a net loss of €89.8 million. That sounds bad, but it's a 34.5 per cent improvement on the loss it made for the same period last year, and sales were up an impressive 57 per cent to €260 million. So things are getting better.
Of those sales, both Tom Clancy's H.A.W.X. 2 and R.U.S.E. performed "below expectations", as mentioned, but Wii smash hit Just Dance fuelled solid back catalogue sales.
And Ubisoft enjoyed a twofold increase in digital sales off the back of Scott Pilgrim on XBLA and PSN, downloadable content and sales of PC games.
Looking forward to the rest of the quarter, Ubisoft pointed to its impressive release slate of games it reckons should rake in the cash.
There's Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood, due out this week. Just Dance 2 is already doing the business. Then there's Raving Rabbids Travel in Time for the Wii, Michael Jackson The Experience for the Wii, DS and PSP, Your Shape: Fitness Evolved, MotionSports and Fighters Uncaged for Xbox 360 Kinect.
CEO Yves Guillemot said: "Ubisoft's outlook is extremely encouraging for the upcoming Christmas period. Just Dance 2, launched in mid-October, is the Wii phenomenon of the moment, with sales up 75 per cent.
"Assassin's Creed Brotherhood has the potential to outstrip the exceptional performance of the previous episodes, with pre-orders up 25 per cent over Assassin's Creed II. The initial reviews have been extremely positive, praising the breadth of the single-player experience as well as the game's revolutionary multiplayer mode.
"Michael Jackson The Experience and Raving Rabbids Travel in Time are also expected to contribute to our success in the coming quarter, which looks set to see record performances. We are also encouraged by the very positive early performance of Kinect and the good showing of our games for this system, especially Your Shape: Fitness Evolved which is the best selling third-party game for Kinect in the United States."
http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2010-11-15-ubisoft-delays-ghost-recon-and-driver
