The slow reaction to Ubisoft’s two most recent releases have sent shares of the French video games publisher tumbling for a second consecutive day.
When trading reopened after the Labor Day holiday in the United States, Ubisoft’s stock price immediately dropped another 8.5 percent, from $3.76 to $3.44 a share. The stock closed the day at $3.36, roughly 10 percent from where it began. Either way, it’s the lowest share price Ubisoft has seen since 2015. Reuters notes that Ubisoft’s shares traded on European exchanges have fallen 30 percent since the beginning of the year. It’s down 33 percent over the same span (from $5.07 to Tuesday’s $3.36 close) as well.
The latest plunge is thought to be due to the lackluster reception of Star Wars Outlaws, which launched Aug. 30. That game was expected to be a home run for Ubisoft, and while critical reviews have been positive, if not effusively so, fan reception is a lot less enthusiastic. Both groups seem to praise the overall Star Wars aesthetic while panning core gameplay systems, such as a clunky and oblivious stealth system that is central to Outlaws’ swashbuckling narrative.
Add to that a glitch that forced early access players — who paid at least $99 for a special edition offering that preview — to restart their games, and the picture forms of a beleaguered game whose launch has caught shareholders’ attention. Ubisoft’s shares have also dipped thanks to weaker-than-expected guidance offered to investors in its latest quarterly earnings report.
One J.P. Morgan analyst already says that “Star Wars Outlaws has struggled to meet our sales expectations despite positive critical reviews.” Actual sales figures and data relating to the Outlaws launch haven’t yet been made public.
Ubisoft is now looking to Assassin’s Creed Shadows, which launches Nov. 15 for PlayStation 5, Windows PC, and Xbox Series X, to arrest its latest slide.
The bad news isn’t entirely at the feet of Star Wars Outlaws or its reception. A report last week said that the player count for XDefiant, a free-to-play shooter that launched in May, have dropped to the point that developers are being warned post-launch support is in jeopardy if the audience size does not improve by the end of XDefiant’s third multiplayer season.
Featured image via Ubisoft
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