Shares of French video game developer Ubisoft continue to fall for the second day in a row.
As of 11:14 GMT, the value of the company’s securities fell by 2.4%, reaching the lowest level since 2015. Since the beginning of the year, Ubisoft shares have lost more than 30% of their value.
Midcap Partners analyst Charles-Louis Planad explains this drop by the cold reception of the game Star Wars Outlawsreleased last Friday, and low interest in the free-to-play shooter Xdefiantpresented earlier.
Star Wars Outlaws is one of Ubisoft’s two key releases this year. The company is counting on the success of this game and Assassin’s Creed Shadowsscheduled for release on November 15, to improve its financial position after four years of negative cash flow.
Despite generally positive reviews from critics, users rated Star Wars Outlaws rather low. On the Metacritic review aggregator, the game received a predominantly unfavorable user rating of 4.9 out of 10 points.
J.P. Morgan analyst Daniel Curwen notes that the development budget of Star Wars Outlaws is at least 30% higher than the cost of creating Assassin’s Creed Miragereleased last year. At the same time, data from the Twitch streaming platform shows that the new game lags behind AC Mirage in popularity by about 15%.
Kerwen lowered its sales forecast for Star Wars Outlaws by 2 million copies — to 5.5 million units in the fiscal year ending March 2025. Regarding Xdefiant, Planad adds that after an initial surge in interest, there has been a sharp drop in views on Twitch, so this game is likely to have a minimal impact on Ubisoft’s results in the coming quarters.
Source: Reuters
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