Star Wars Outlaws Launch Causes Ubisoft's Stock Market Collapse. Analysts Cut Expected Sale Numbers
Analysts are lowering sales forecasts for Star Wars: Outlaws, and Ubisoft is seeing further declines in its stock value.
Star Wars: Outlaws didn't help Ubisoft. The company's Star Wars sandbox's results disappointed analysts, badly, according to multiple sources (via Game World Observer).
According to Christopher Dring from GamesIndustry.biz, in the UK retail market, the launch of SW: Outlaws was 55% worse than Star Wars Jedi: Survivor. This is still a 15% improvement over Ubisoft Massive's previous game (Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora), and the share of digital distribution in the overall market revenue is also growing steadily.
However, this is clearly an insufficient justification for investors. Especially since analysts significantly lowered the predicted sales of the game. Daniel Kerven from J.P. Morgan's group has revised the forecast, stating that Star Wars: Outlaws will sell 5.5 million copies by the end of this fiscal year (i.e. until March 31, 2025), rather than the previously estimated 7.5 million.
This "disappointment despite positive reviews" didn't leave Ubisoft's financial situation unaffected. As reported by Reuters, in the last five days alone the value of the French publisher's shares has fallen by 11%.
This is bad news for Ubisoft, which has already recorded a 34% drop in stock prices since the beginning of 2024. According to experts, this is also the result of the declining popularity of the shooter game XDefiant. The publisher isn't particularly happy with the results of its title, to say the least, despite the fact that this free online FPS didn't fail on the scale of the Concorde.
The game is allegedly played by around 20,000 players simultaneously on all platforms (PC, XSX/S, PS5) – roughly the same number as Helldivers 2 on Steam alone, which has lost its popularity after recent problems (although on Thursday we are supposed to learn about plans to “fix” this game; via Discord).
It's also important to recall Skulls and Bones - although some players might argue that it's easy to overlook this pirate game after numerous delays and problems. Even after the premiere on Steam and lowering the price below 20 bucks (by 60%), the title doesn't attract crowds.
It's not (once again) a tragedy on the scale of the Concord, but a record "peak" of 2,000 users is not the result one would expect from a multiplayer game of a major publisher (via SteamDB).
