Ubisoft sees sales plummet due to lack of tentpole titles

Ubisoft seems to be struggling to measure up to its success last year with Watch Dogs, as the company reported a significant year-over-year drop in sales via its latest earnings report.

For the six months ended September 30th -- and thus before the October launch of Assassin's Creed Syndicate -- Ubisoft reported €207.3 million (~$224.9 million USD) in sales, a 60.3 percent drop (at constant exchange rates) year-over-year.

"The fact that more than 80 percent of our annual sales are expected to be generated in the second half of the year mechanically weighed on our earnings for the first six months,” admitted Ubisoft chief Yves Guillemot in the company's earnings report.

The lion's share of those sales are expected to come from five tentpole titles expected to release in the latter half of Ubisoft's 2015 fiscal year: The Division, Rainbow Six Siege, Far Cry Primal and the recently-released Just Dance 2016 and Assassin's Creed Syndicate.

Guillemot also touted the fact that nearly half of Ubisoft's sales (48.3 percent) for the first half of its 2015 fiscal year came from its "digital segment" of digitally-distributed games, rather than sales at retail.

That's a significant increase from the same period last year, when Ubisoft's digital segment only accounted for 27.8 percent of sales, but it's actually a bit of a decrease from the first quarter of this year, when Ubisoft noted that 56 percent of its sales were coming from digitally-distributed games.

Of course, the company's actual earnings on these sales are yet unclear, as under French accounting law Ubisoft is not required to publicly report its actual profits until the end of its fiscal year.