Ubisoft earns big from digital game sales, microtransactions

Ubisoft has once again made the lion's share of its net sales from digital, showing how the company has not only changed but laying out a clear path for the publisher's future.

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Over the past few years Ubisoft has made a significant transition to embrace digital in its lineup of games, and its slate typically taps the live service model to some extent (look at The Division, Rainbow Six: Siege, and even the upcoming Far Cry 5, for instance). Now in its latest Fiscal Q3'18 earnings report, Ubisoft illustrates just how important digital is by earning 80% of its total net sales for the quarter from digital purchases, DLC, subscriptions and microtransactions.

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Ubisoft made €725 million in net sales in the three-month period from October thru December 2017, of which 80.4%, or €670 million, was from digital. That represents an increase of 75% year-over-year.

Player Recurring Investment, which includes DLC, microtransactions, and subscriptions, was up a huge 87.4% for the quarter, raking in a substantial €318.5 million and representing nearly 30% of total net sales.

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Other interesting facts from the report:

• PlayStation 4 had 44% of total sales by platform, where as Xbox One sat at 25% and PC at 15%
• Ubisoft expects to make €2.1 billion in net sales by the end of the fiscal year ending March 2019
• Digital revenue is expected to hit ~60% of total net sales in FY2019 (fiscal year ending March 2019)
• Ubisoft is working on an unannounced franchise that will lapse into FY2020