Analyst: Focus On 'Faddish' Dance Category Could Hurt Ubisoft

Despite strong sales for the Just Dance franchise and Michael Jackson: The Experience, Janco Partners Analyst Mike Hickey fears the dance category "could prove faddish" for Ubisoft. Hickey acknowledged that sales of over 10 million Just Dance franchise games and 3 million units of Michael Jackson: The Experience on Wii have helped Ubisoft's performance in the short term, but warned demand for the genre could turn south quickly, as it did for the once-hot music game genre. That concern doesn't seem to be at the forefront for Ubisoft, with Hickey predicting the company will announce new Kinect and Move ports to accompany the upcoming Wii version of Just Dance 3, as well as a new dance title built around an unannounced artist. Hickey is also pessimistic about Ubisoft's ability to continue growing the increasingly important Assassin's Creed series. Last holiday's Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood has sold 7.3 million units through March, Hickey said. This is compared to 8 million sales of the 2007 original, he pointed out, despite intervening growth in HD console ownership. The analyst predicted just under 7.2 million total sales for Assassin's Creed: Revelations and 8 million sales for Just Dance 3, by far the two most important upcoming titles for the company's current fiscal year. He also predicted 2 million sales for the company's unannounced single-artist-focused dance title.