Ubisoft’s big third quarter pushes it to third spot

Ubisoft has just completed tallying the results of their holiday quarter performance and the results have been no less than fantastic. Most of their franchises have proven to be hits, including next-gen newcomer Assassin’s Creed (PC, PS3, Xbox 360). The French-based company now says they’ve moved up as the third-leading independent publishers in the business. Details in the full article.

French-based publisher Ubisoft has released the results of its fiscal 2007 third quarter sales. The results are very encouraging as the holiday rush powered strong revenues for the company.

According to its press release, Ubisoft is now the third-leading third-party game maker thanks to consistent numbers from its franchises and strong performances from new product lines. Income was up 44.4 percent, or 50.1percent at constant exchange rates when stacked against the same time frame from last year.

Sales in the first nine months rose 47.2 percent, or 52.1percent at constant exchange rates from fiscal 2006-2007. This may be attributed to the market’s adoption of new gaming hardware.

“The vast majority of our games reaped the benefits of particularly strong market momentum over the Christmas period,” says Ubisoft CEO Yves Guillemot. “Two new long term multi-million franchises were created, Assassin’s Creed (PC, PS3, Xbox 360) and Imagine, generating sell-in sales of 5 and 2.5 million units respectively.”

He continues “they will join our existing portfolio of 12 franchises. As a result, Ubisoft moved up from fourth to third place in the overall ranking of independent publishers in 2007.”

Also seen as a factor in Ubisoft’s 2007 success was its confidence to invest early in Nintendo platforms. Ubisoft is among the very first third-party game makers to support the Nintendo Wii game console, and its titles continue to thrive on the huge-selling Nintendo DS handheld.