PC passes PS4 to become Ubisoft's top revenue generator

Ubisoft reported higher-than-expected performance in its first-quarter financial report for FY2019-20, "led notably by Assassin's Creed Odyssey, Rainbow Six Siege, and Player Recurring Investment." Also notably leading the way, in terms of platforms, is the PC, which accounted for 34 percent of Ubisoft's net bookings for the quarter.

That figure is up from 24 percent over the same period last year, and puts it ahead of the PlayStation 4 (31 percent), Xbox One (18 percent), Nintendo Switch (5 percent), and mobile games (7 percent). Interestingly, while Ubisoft has had recent success with a number of its major multiplatform games, it attributed the PC surge primarily to the strength of the strategy game Anno 1800.

"The 34 percent was pushed by Anno, which is a PC-specific game, but even with that launch, we had a very good performance on PC overall," Ubisoft CEO Yves Guillemot said during an investors call.

Anno 1800 is available on the Epic Games Store and not Steam, but CFO Frédérick Duguet cited its performance on Ubisoft's own Uplay Store as particularly noteworthy. "We did well with Anno 1800 on Epic, but the key point here is really that we continue to have very strong momentum on Uplay," he said.

Guillemot alluded to a similar point in his response to a question about the performance of The Division 2 on EGS, in which he was clearly more enthusiastic about Ubisoft's storefront than Epic's. 

"We can't give much information on that because we have been with [Epic] for a short time now," he said. "What we can say is we are working very well, hand-in-hand, to make sure we can grow sales directly now, between our Uplay Store, which is doing extremely well, and the Epic Store that is growing step by step. So overall, when you take Uplay and the Epic Store, we are very happy with what we are achieving."

The financial report also slated two Anno 1800 expansions, Botanica and Sunken Treasures, for release sometime between July and September. A third planned expansion, The Passage, is not yet dated.