News

The reason for all those Ubisoft horse titles is revealed

You need look no further than the company's Q2 financials

The reason for all those Ubisoft horse titles is revealed
|
DS

It's been almost too easy to mock Ubisoft in recent years, so committed has the company been to releasing the types of games that make gamers want to take up a less embarrassing hobby. Such as accompanying Kerry Katona to live television appearances.

We've either had or will shortly be getting the likes of My Weight Loss Coach, Imagine Teacher, Fashion Dogz, Horsez 2 (pictured) and Ener-G Horse Riders among many, many more, and almost all of these types of games appear exclusively on Nintendo's DS.

But it seems that Ubisoft isn't just doing it to upset us. There is actually some sound business logic behind these games. Which we sort of suspected, obviously, but we didn't realise just how much Ubisoft is now depending on these casual titles to bring in the bucks.

According to the company's latest financials for Q2 in the 2008-2009 fiscal year (reported by Joystiq), a whopping 39 per cent of its sales came from DS. That's up considerably from the 23 per cent they accounted for at the same time the previous year.

In comparison, PS3 and Xbox 360 each represent 20 per cent of the slice and Wii 11 per cent.

PSP makes up a miserly two per cent of the company's profits, presumably because it's hardly released any PSP games lately. Sony will be thrilled.

On the subject of Ubisoft's trek into the casual territory, it's unlikely many gamers – especially adult ones – are interested in the games Ubisoft is producing so many of. But it's perhaps a good sign in respect to how diverse a bunch the DS demographic is clearly becoming. Give it ten years and there might actually be some girls to play on Xbox Live.

As long as the company ploughs some of these profits into its more mainstream titles too, there's little to complain about. Although increasingly its quality output is on the home consoles (with games such as Far Cry 2 and Rainbow Six) while DS gets the casual stuff along with the odd poor conversion of a game like Assassin's Creed and PSP gets absolutely nothing. Shame on you, Ubi.

Kath Brice
Kath Brice
Kath gave up a job working with animals five years ago to join the world of video game journalism, which now sees her running our DS section. With so many male work colleagues, many have asked if she notices any difference.