Ubisoft just released its financial report, and one of the major takeaways was that Tom Clancy’s, The Division 2 is the best selling game in 2019. In other news, PC is the most profitable platform for the French videogame company after overtaking PS4. Also, at 93%, digital sales dominate the company’s total bookings.
Upon its release, The Division 2 was the best selling game in the UK. However, this was just 20% of the total sales of the original game’s launch-week sales. Today, the online RPG game is the “biggest hit since the beginning of the year.” This is according to data collected from the month of January to June 2019. The sources include Ubisoft’s internal metrics and data from NPD, GfK, Famitsu, and GSD.
Released on March 15 this year, The Division 2 is the sequel to the 2016 sensation, The Division. It is set in a post-apocalyptic Washington DC, after a smallpox biological attack. The US government is wary of the imminent collapse of social order, so it comes up with a vigilante, Strategic Homeland Division (SHD), aka, The Division. To bring out the post-apocalyptic atmosphere, Massive Entertainment revealed that part of the effects was recorded in Chernobyl.
Even though Ubisoft didn’t meet its sales targets for PS4 and Xbox One, the general performance is higher than expected. A contributing factor is the dominance of The Division 2. Besides, Assassin’s Creed Odyssey and Rainbow Six Siege, among other games have played a key role in beating the quarterly targets. For example, in the first quarter, Assassin’s Creed witnessed a “very sharp increase in daily engagement, PRI, and sell-through” in comparison to Origins.
PC has also witnessed exponential growth, and according to the report, it has overtaken PS4. 34% of Ubisoft’s net quarter bookings came from PC, and this is an increase of 10%. PS4 comes second at 31%, then flowed by Xbox One at 18%, mobile gaming 7%, Switch 5% while the rest shared the remainder, 5%.
While PC may be riding high, Ubisoft has failed to meet its targets in terms of console sales. Well, part of the explanation is the ever-growing competition in the genre. It is also worthy of acknowledging the impact of the new Ubisoft release, Anno 1800, which is a PC exclusive. “We did well with Anno 1800 on Epic, but the key point here is really that we continue to have very strong momentum on Uplay,” said Frédérick Duguet, Ubisoft’s CFO. But as the company confirms, there isn’t a drop as the console sales for the new edition are the same as that of the original The Division (2016).
