PC overtakes PS4 as Ubisoft’s top-earning platform

For a long time, the PlayStation 4 has been Ubisoft’s biggest earner. It makes sense. As the leading console this generation, it stands to reason that most games, DLC and other digital purchases were via that platform. That’s changed! Ubisoft has reported a cracker start to their financial year, with the largest percentage of their income in the first quarter coming from PC gamers.

Ubisoft says that their higher-than-expected income “led notably by Assassin’s Creed Odyssey, Rainbow Six Siege, and Player Recurring Investment.” They also say that 34% of that income is from PC, up from 24% from the same period last year. That puts it ahead of PlayStation 4 (31%), Xbox One (18%), Nintendo Switch (5%), and mobile games (7%).

Ubiboss Yves Guillemot attributes the increase in PC income to the uPlay platform, and the generally considered niche city-builder Anno.

“The 34 per cent was pushed by Anno, which is a PC-specific game, but even with that launch, we had a very good performance on PC overall,” Ubisoft CEO Yves Guillemot said during an investors call. As you may recall, Anno is one of the PC games that jumped from Steam to Epic’s store. While it’s done well there, the company says uPlay had a bigger part to play.

“We did well with Anno 1800 on Epic, but the key point here is really that we continue to have very strong momentum on Uplay,” said CFO Frédérick Duguet in the investor call.

Ubisoft seems really pleased with uPlay’s performance, and they’re a little more enthusiastic about their own platform than they seem to be with Epic’s.

“We can’t give much information on that because we have been with [Epic] for a short time now,” said Guillemot. “What we can say is we are working very well, hand-in-hand, to make sure we can grow sales directly now, between our Uplay Store, which is doing extremely well, and the Epic Store that is growing step by step. So overall, when you take Uplay and the Epic Store, we are very happy with what we are achieving.”

Given the success of PC for the company of late, it makes sense that they’re pushing for a PC-centric subscription service in uPlay+.

Last Updated: July 18, 2019