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Anno 1800 helped drive PC to be Ubisoft's biggest cash cow for last quarter

Anno 1800 helped drive PC to be Ubisoft's biggest cash cow for last quarter

French publishing giant Ubisoft says that PC was its most successful platform for the three months ending June 30th, 2019.

According to the company's financial report for that period, PC was behind 34 per cent of the firm's net bookings, an increase of ten per cent for the same period year-on-year. For the same three month period in 2018, PlayStation 4 took the biggest share - 38 per cent - a figure that has now dipped to 31 per cent for the most recent financial quarter.

That 34 per cent clocks in at a cool €106.8m ($120m) from the total €314.2m ($353.1) the firm saw in net bookings.

Speaking to investors - as transcribed by the good folks over at Seeking Alpha - CFO Frédérick Duguet said that this rise in PC was due, in part, to the performance of historic strategy title Anno 1800, which was released in April and had the fastest-selling launch of the franchise to date.

Ubisoft also said that the Uplay Plus subscription service - announced at E3 2019 - will allow it to get more from its back catalogue.

"On a platform basis, PC represents 34 per cent of our total revenues versus 24% last year, driven by the success of Anno 1800 which performed very strongly on Uplay. Uplay continued its strong momentum," Duguet said.

"And as announced during E3, we will launch in September Uplay Plus for PC, a new subscription platform. It will also be available on Stadia in 2020. Uplay Plus will allow us to stress on the direct relationship we have with players by leveraging the breadth of our portfolio, which is one of the most diversified in the industry."

CEO Yves Guillemot (pictured) added: "So the 34 per cent was also pushed by Anno which is a PC specific game. But even with that launch, we had a very good performance on PC overall."


PCGamesInsider Contributing Editor

Alex Calvin is a freelance journalist who writes about the business of games. He started out at UK trade paper MCV in 2013 and left as deputy editor over three years later. In June 2017, he joined Steel Media as the editor for new site PCGamesInsider.biz. In October 2019 he left this full-time position at the company but still contributes to the site on a daily basis. He has also written for GamesIndustry.biz, VGC, Games London, The Observer/Guardian and Esquire UK.