A host of upcoming Ubisoft titles received new release windows, per a recent earnings report. According to the report, games like Far Cry 6, Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six Quarantine, Tom Clancy’s The Division: Heartland, Roller Champions, and Riders Republic are all planned to launch before March 31, 2022, while Skull & Bones is now scheduled for a release between April 1, 2022, and March 31, 2023.
Far Cry 6, Rainbow Six Quarantine (Working title), Riders Republic, The Division Heartland, Roller Champions and other smaller titles are planned to release before March 31, 2022.
Skull and Bones will release in the year between April 1, 2022 and March 31, 2023. pic.twitter.com/K61mEtpLhu
— Daniel Ahmad (@ZhugeEX) May 11, 2021
Notably, many of these titles have been delayed at least once, with some of them — such as Skull & Bones — suffering a tumultuous and lengthy development cycle. It was initially planned to launch in 2018, then was pushed to 2019, and was delayed once again to 2021. Now, Ubisoft expects it to be ready by the end of March 2023.
Originally, Far Cry 6 and Riders Republic were supposed to launch in the first half of 2021, while Rainbow Six Quarantine (which has reportedly been renamed to Rainbow Six Parasite) was planned to launch in 2020. None of these games have firm dates, but are now planned to come out within the next year.
Ubisoft also made mention of the upcoming Avatar, Beyond Good & Evil 2, and the untitled Star Wars game, but did not announce release windows for those titles — only referring to them as portfolio expansions.
The company stated it aims to move away from relying on multiple AAA game releases each year and shift some of its focus on free-to-play experiences.
“We said for a number of years that our normal template is to come with either three or four AAA games, so we’ll stick to that plan for fiscal 2022,” Ubisoft Chief Financial Officer Frederick Duguet said. “But we see that we are progressively, continuously moving from a model that used to be only focused on AAA releases to a model where we have a combination of strong releases from AAA and strong back catalog dynamics, but also complimenting our program of new releases with free-to-play and other premium experiences.”
The company also announced that the revenue generated by the Assassin’s Creed franchise is up 50% year-over-year, while unique players across PC and consoles have reached 141 million, an increase of 20% year-over-year. Finally, The Division franchise is up to 40 million players across all consoles.