INTERVIEW: YVES GUILLEMOT, UBISOFT New Year’s Yves
Last year Ubisoft told MCV it would take on EA and Activision as the world’s top publisher. One year later, and the firm is Europe’s No.2 games company thanks to its biggest ever Q4. Christopher Dring asks CEO Yves Guillemot how Ubisoft stole Christmas
Christmas 2011 was a challenging time for the global games market. And it was a hugely congested quarter, with a number of big releases. How did Ubisoft manage to rise above the rest and dominate December? We had record-high sales for the Christmas period, which exceeded our expectations. One reason is that we were able to reach a wider audience than other companies, thanks to the quality of our games and our capacity to create brands for both hardcore and casual players. Assassin’s Creed: Revelationsdid well, and Just Dance generated outstanding sales. We also saw another increase in our online sales. So, even though it was an incredibly competitive quarter with a lot of great games for customers to choose from, we were able to do very well by executing on our key strategies in the casual, high-definition and online areas. We’re looking forward to 2012, and excited to deliver even more incredibly creative and rewarding games to players.
Has the continued success of the dance genre surprised you? There were fears it would go the way of Guitar Hero. Are you still wary of that?
We are challenging EA and Activision. Just Dance 3 was the second-best selling game at retail in the US last year.
“ Yves Guillemot, Ubisoft 16 January 27th 2012
Initially, the level of success took us by surprise, yes. We didn’t expect it to become the phenomenon it did. However, we did anticipate that Just Dance 3would be bigger than Just Dance 2, because we saw how the brand was growing and we didn’t see any slowdown. The game continues to attract more and more people, no matter what kind of games they say they typically like to play. That growing audience helped us sell more than 25 million copies of the Just Dancefranchise and has helped keep Just Dance 3 in the Top Five in sales since its launch.