Ubisoft: “DS is declining quickly”
French publisher suffers 67% drop in DS software sales over the last year
It was once the leading light in third party casual software publishing on DS but in today’s quickly changing market Ubisoft has suffered a stark change in fortunes. In the last 12 months the company has seen sales of its DS titles fall by a huge 67 per cent.
However, Ubisoft’s market share of the DS software market has remained exactly the same – proof that the overall DS software market is in freefall.
“The DS is declining quickly,” boss Yves Guillemot stated. “The casual business is changing rapidly and we have to reinvent it this year. We already have a big shift from DS to Wii this year and it will continue with the Wii and Xbox 360 new camera next year.
“What we are seeing in Europe, especially on the DS, is that the piracy is strong so we are working to put new figurines and new elements in the box that will change that for the future.
“But in the short-term it's affecting us. For example in Europe we have the same market share on DS as last year, so it's really the market which is declining. Retail, because of that, is less active on the format.”
And the result is that in the same way Ubisoft quickly re-aligned its business to focus on the DS in 2007 and 2008, the coming years will see that focus shift once again.
Ubisoft’s executive dorector Alain Corre added: “We expect the Wii to account for 40 per cent of sales in our causal label versus last year when it was at 18 per cent, so it's a big change.”
http://www.mcvuk.com/news/35182/Ubis...lining-quickly
