Ubisoft Says Delays, Cancellations Were Because It Was Making Too Many Games at Once

Ubisoft’s really been going through it lately, coming off of multiple years with game delay after game delay, and only just last month holding an emergency investor call following the news that it was canceling three unannounced projects…on top of the four it had just cancelled the previous year. But during today’s quarterly earnings call, CEO Yves Guillemot reassured investors that all the cancellations were necessary to make room for the games that remained.

“We cancelled a few games because we needed to make space for other games that are in devleopment in the company, and that’s really helping all the other games that are progressing well,” Guillemot said. “Now we feel we have the right number of games, knowing that we will launch a lot of games in financial year ’24 that will also give space for the other games that are on the way in the company.

“If we look at 24 months, the number of games in the company in work in the company will go down quite a lot, and that will give more space to all the games we have on the way. Having said that, we know that many of those games are also going to have post-launch content, and this will take a certain number of teams and talents to actually create that content.”

This makes some sense – if Ubisoft’s teams were spread thin across a lot of projects and many of those projects were not going well, it seems logical to cancel the ones going poorly and move those teams to offer support on the projects that seemed more promising. And the promise of a lot more games in the coming two years (financial year 24 begins April of this year) is certainly encouraging after several years of relative drought from Ubisoft.

We already have an idea of what’s coming from Ubisoft from April 2023 through March 2024: Assassin’s Creed Mirage, Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora, Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six Mobile, Tom Clancy’s The Division Resurgence, The Crew Motorfest, and Skull and Bones (fresh off its sixth delay). We also know that Ubisoft has “another large game” in the works that hasn’t been announced yet. It’s possible we see these games and more at E3 2023, which Ubisoft said today it will attend “if it happens” following reports that Nintendo, Sony, and Xbox will not be on the show floor for the first physical E3 since 2019.

Ubisoft reported net bookings of €726.9 million ($777.1 million), down 2.6% year over year, and is projecting its full year net bookings to be down 10% year over year when it reports them at following the end of the current quarter.

Rebekah Valentine is a news reporter for IGN. You can find her on Twitter @duckvalentine.