A video game company can only take so many financial hits before admitting that there's something wrong with its approach.
With company share prices down by 86.5% since September 2019, which shouldn't have happened considering how many video game companies thrived during the COVID-19 pandemic, Ubisoft is now singing a different tune.
In its latest earnings call, Ubisoft ocnfirmed that it's lowering its financial targets for the current fiscal year, expecting break-even non-IFRS operating income after it had already lowered its forecasts for Q2 from €500 million ($557.7 million) to just €350 million ($390.4 million) to €370 million ($412.7 million). Ubisoft is now targeting net bookings of €1.95 billion at the end of the fiscal year.
This comes shortly after Ubisoft faced criticism shortly following the release of Star Wars Outlaws, one of the year's most talked-about games. Although not a Game of the Year contender by any means, Star Wars Outlaws was, in many ways, a major refinement of Ubisoft's open-world formula and gave audiences a chance to explore the Star Wars universe throughout the years of someone who was neither Sith nor Jedi.
Unfortunately, as per Ubisoft, Star Wars Outlaws enjoyed a "softer than expected" release, which basically means that the game didn't sell particularly well. As a result, the company released an unusually candid response as it delayed Assassin's Creed Shadows to February 14, just days before Avowed comes out on February 18, and potentially bringing it close to the release date of Ghost of Yotei as well as other upcoming Take-Two Interactive titles, including Grand Theft Auto 6—a development Ubisoft CEO Yves Guillemot once welcomed.