Ubisoft: “DS is declining quickly”

***wraggster*** · July 28th, 2009, 21:10

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

**Xuio** · July 28th, 2009, 23:58

Stop releasing crap on DS and sales will go up...

**ChaoticanarchyX** · July 29th, 2009, 00:54

yeah, like no support for Mp3 on the DSi, or moive capibilites this list could probably go on and on lol

**Hevyduty** · July 29th, 2009, 01:48

Originally Posted by Xuio

Stop releasing crap on DS and sales will go up...

Precisely. Ubisoft made a lot of money on the "Imagine" series, which is game after game of complete crap. You can only get away with that for so long.

I think what's happened is that the casual market were newbies to video games when they first got a DS or Wii. It was easy to sell them worthless shovelware. But over time they have gotten increasingly savvy, having wasted money on a lot of bad games, and are now a bit more discerning. That's bad news for companies like Ubisoft that have made a living selling lousy games, particularly for the DS, for years now.

**ChaoticanarchyX** · July 30th, 2009, 23:07

[QUOTE=Hevyduty;2148243986]over time they have gotten increasingly savvy, having wasted money on a lot of bad games, and are now a bit more discerning. QUOTE]

Thats happens over time of spending 20 bucks on a ass-tastic title, then cart it down to a GameStop and only get like three bucks back for it XD