Ubisoft recently filed its fourth quarter and year end reports for fiscal 2013, reporting total sales of €1.26 billion for the year ($1.66 billion), an 18.4% increase on FY2012, and €175 million for the quarter ($230 million), an 8.7% year-on-year increase.

Far Cry 3 was one of the major movers and shakers behind this bounty, having shipped 6 million units, but The Settlers Online and Just Dance were also major performers, with Ubisoft highlighting the performance of free-to-play and casual games. The publisher noted that Assassin’s Creed and Just Dance had joined the ranks of the 20 best-selling franchies in the industry during the year.

It also revealed that the tepidly-received Assassin’s Creed III managed to ship 12.5 million units, including digital sales. During a post-release call to investors, Ubisoft said that it isn’t banking on Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag to do the same.

“In our numbers we expect less than last year,” CEO Yves Guillemot said.

“We are actually pushing to achieve more than last year because we think the pirate segment is a great segment that can generate a lot more on a worldwide basis than what was achieved last year. But we wanted to be prudent on our expectations so that it can probably be a bonus if it comes.”

Other reveals from the call include word of the shelving of Patrice Desiléts’s 1666.

Source: Ubisoft IR via Blue’s News

Following the surprise announcement last week that Ubisoft had unceremoniously and quietly fired Patrice Desilets, the man who created Assassin’s Creed, they’ve now confirmed that work on the title he was heading up has been suspended.

During the company’s 2013 investor earnings call, CEO Yves Guillemont claimed that they had “suspended Project 1666 for an undisclosed period of time”. Guillemont also noted that “After more than two months of discussions with Patrice, we couldn’t align our visions both on the project development and team management.”

“Consequently, our collaboration has ended.”

Project 1666 was in development at THQ Montreal, which was acquired by Ubisoft in January (along with Desilets).

Source: IGN

Patrice Desilets, the man who designed the first two Assassin’s Creed games which went on to make Ubisoft squillions, left the company a while back to go work at THQ. Then, THQ collapsed, and Ubisoft purchased the studio that Patrice was leading, as well as the game they were working on — something called 1666.

Today, however, it looks like the relationship between Desiliets and the company has soured.

“Unfortunately, since the acquisition (of THQ Montreal), the good faith discussions between Patrice and Ubisoft aimed at aligning Patrice’s and the studio’s visions have been inconclusive,” reads a statement by Ubisoft. “As a result, Patrice has left the studio. Our priorities remain with the teams already hard at work on projects in development.”

Patrice, however, tells a different story.

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Ubisoft have contacted us with an official statement regarding the hack earlier in the week which saw users gain access to the entire Far Cry 3: Blood Dragon game (and others) by using a simple text editor.

“We are aware of the issue and are working to resolve it quickly,” reads the official statement. “Uplay’s PC download service will be unavailable until the problem is fixed, but no personal information was compromised and all other Uplay services remain available.”

We’ll bring you further news as we have it.

Far Cry 3: Blood Dragon hasn’t even been announced for PC. There was a listing for it on the Steam database, but no release date (although a pulled XBLA listing claimed May 1). And yet, right now, you can open uPlay on your PC and trick it into downloading it for you. Then, you can play it to your heart’s content. Beginning to end.

This isn’t some half-assed beta. This is the full, finished game. It’s just sitting there on uPlay’s servers, waiting for the bigwigs to pull the switch.

Is this legal? Probably not. And just to be safe, I’m not going to tell you how to do it. By tomorrow morning Ubisoft will have fixed this exploit anyway. They’re not stupid, and in any case, that’s not the point.

The real point here is this: Ubisoft is off to a pretty poor start on its mission to improve its relationship with PC gamers.

Over the last few years Ubisoft has replaces a number of formerly vilified publishers to become the PC gamer’s antagonist of choice, with its – shall we say, unpopular? – DRM practices; delayed or absent PC releases for multiplatform titles; and shoddy ports. Its Uplay service is often resented as an unnecessary extra step of authentication, and its extension to third-party titles hasn’t gone down very well.

Worldwide director Stephanie Perotti says the publisher is aware of feedback and working hard to win back gamers’ trust by providing an alternative to existing digital distributors.

“Announcing all these partners for Uplay and a wider choice of PC games, it shows our commitment to PC, and we want to improve our relationship with the PC community,” she told MCV.

“We are always seeking to improve. We took a lot of that feedback on board. With every game on PC we are improving. Far Cry 3 and Assassin’s Creed III on PC were very high quality.”

I don’t think you can have too much choice. It is just another way to expose more content. At Uplay we are also offering all Ubisoft titles, more console content and elements that gamers are more interested in. It’s about offering more options and more choice.”

Source: MCV

In a surprising twist, today Ubisoft and EA agreed to use each others’ digital delivery platforms to sell each others’ various games. Presumably coming together in a concerted effort to make Steam less appealing, the two publishers will now work together rather than trying to cut each others’ lunch.

In fact, Ubisoft is opening its doors to all manner of third-party developers for the first time, including Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment, 1C Company, bitComposer Games, Bohemia Interactive, Encore Software, Focus Home Interactive, Freebird Games, Iceberg Interactive, Nordic Games, Paradox Interactive, Recoil Games, Robot Entertainment, Telltale Games, and Torn Banner Studios.

There’s no word on whether or not installing an EA game through uPlay will require you to launch Origin, or if buying an Ubisoft game through Origin will mean firing up uPlay anyway. Hopefully not, as that would be… well, the word “horrific” springs to mind.

Source: Press Release

You may remember several months ago, some screenshots surfaced that many speculated were Prince of Persian in origin. They came up again yesterday when Ubisoft Montreal’s CEO stated that the Prince of Persia franchise had been paused. Speculations were that it was taking place in some sort of Egyptian setting that we couldn’t quite make out.

Well, we were right and we were wrong, it turns out. It was an Egyptian setting, but it wasn’t Prince of Persia. It was called ‘Osiris’, and a rough-cut trailer was uploaded to Vimeo five months ago as part of the composer’s portfolio.

Between this and Ubi Montreal’s statement about the franchise yesterday, Polygon went straight to the source to clear it up. It was definitely A Thing, they replied, but said Thing has been shuttered.

“The content in question was from a Ubisoft project that is no longer moving forward,” An Ubi rep replied.

Head over to Vimeo to check out what exists of the trailer and let us know what you think of it. Can you see any little hints in there we may have missed out on?

Source: Polygon

If you follow industry gossip at all, you’ll know that Ubisoft’s acquisition of THQ Montreal is a little bit amusing, because the studio was founded when Assassin’s Creed creator Patrice Desiléts jumped ship to THQ, taking so many former colleagues with him that Ubisoft sought an injunction against its rogue agent.

Desiléts is yet to speak out about the acquisition, but Ubisoft Canada boss Yannis Mallat seems pretty calm about it. “I’ve known Patrice for 13 years and I know him very well, he’s a great talent and I respect him as a creator. We’re very happy to look forward to working with him again,” Mallat told the Financial Post.

THQ Montreal employs around 170 staff and was working on two new IPs, codenamed 1666 and Underdog, which Ubisoft now owns. Ubisoft already has extensive offices in Montreal, where its flagship development studio boasts one of the highest headcounts in the world and has fingers in practically every triple-A Ubi pie.

Source: Financial Post via GamesRadar

MCV UK is reporting overnight that Ubisoft are rumoured to be considering a purchase of the struggling THQ, who recently filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy as they restructure.

According to sources within Ubisoft, the company is currently in negotiations with THQ (or their new owners at Clearlake Capital) but aren’t willing to drop the dosh on THQ until the price drops to bottom-barrel levels. Ubisoft are reportedly prepared to hold out until THQ becomes desperate enough to sell off specific assets — presumably, one or two key franchises that the French company have had their eye on.

Ubisoft have made no comment, and considering the nature of the story, probably won’t. More as it happens!

Source: MCV UK

Ubisoft desperately want their Uplay platform to take off, and it makes sense; why advertise another company’s store-front when you could have one all your own? Why merely share in your profits when you could reap the entire amount for yourself? In theory this sounds like a reasonable justification, but in practice it seems that companies have yet to learn that competing with Steam is a tough row to hoe, and that their legitimate customers are the ones yoked to the plough. Here are the top five ways Ubisoft needs to improve on Uplay if they even want to hope to compete.

Far Cry 3‘s co-developer Ubisoft Massive are working on a next-gen triple-A online RPG, according to an employee’s LinkedIn profile. Marc Cartwright, who has since changed his profile, was listed as a ‘Game Designer on AAA Next-Gen Online RPG’ on the site, and is now listed as simply a ‘Game Designer at Massive Entertainment’. Hmmm.

Cartwright has a history of working on MMOs and the title is described as an ‘Online RPG’ so there is speculation that the mystery title is an MMO. There are also rumours that it is related to some screenshots that were leaked, screenshots which many speculated were a new Prince of Persia game. Hopefully it won’t be a Prince of Persia MMO, because that seems like a terrible idea.

What do you think, sports racers? Do you know something we don’t? Do you have anything to add? Which would you rather it be, Prince of Persia or MMO? Or would you like to see a PoP MMO? Let us know.

Source: VG247