As they have made their latest financial report, Ubisoft has outlined what the future holds for the company, with a massive increase in the number of developers working on the Assassin’s Creed franchise.
“We notably plan to increase the number of talents working on the Assassin’s Creed brand by 40% over the coming years,” said co-founder and CEO Yves Guillemot, though this is just one part of a “progressive reallocation of resources” that has come after a tricky few years for the company.
2022-23 took a step back from 2021-22, with sales for the full year down by 14.6% from €2.1 billion to €1.8 billion. That’s not ideal, and Ubisoft is making a cost reduction plan to cut €200 million from its budget in the next two years. The company has dropped below 20,000 employees as they’ve made cuts, restructured teams and tightened on recruitment… but they still plan to increase developers on Assassin’s Creed by 40%.
That makes sense when Assassin’s Creed Valhalla proved to be very popular and have 44% more players than AC Origins and 19% more than AC Odyssey at their comparable lifespan. It’s also making more money per player. Last year, Ubisoft outlined a broad roadmap including Assassin’s Creed Mirage, Assassin’s Creed codename Red, Assassin’s Creed codename Hexe, Assassin’s Creed codename Jade and Assassin’s Creed codename Invictus as well as the Infinity platform.
Rainbow Six Siege also saw increased playtime last year, and The Division 2 income increased 36% year on year with Year 5 starting in June with a new game mode.
Key to any future successes will be releasing major games, with Guillemot outlining that games within the Assasin’s Creed brand, Avatar, Rainbow Six and The Division are coming out this year, as well as live
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