Ubisoft's Star Wars Outlaws Underperforms, Impacting Share Price
Ubisoft's highly anticipated Star Wars Outlaws, intended as a financial turnaround for the company, has reportedly underperformed in sales, causing a dip in Ubisoft's share price. This follows a similar pattern to last week's decline.
Despite positive critical reception, sales have been described as sluggish. J.P. Morgan analyst Daniel Kerven lowered his sales projection for the game from 7.5 million units to 5.5 million units by March 2025. This follows the game's release on August 30th.
Ubisoft's Q1 2024-25 sales report highlighted Star Wars Outlaws and Assassin's Creed Shadows (AC Shadows) as key titles for future growth. While the company reported a 15% increase in console and PC session days, largely due to Games-as-a-Service, and a 7% year-on-year increase in monthly active users (MAUs) to 38 million, the underperformance of Outlaws is a significant concern.
The negative impact on Ubisoft's share price is evident. On September 3rd, shares fell 5.1% on Monday and a further 2.4% by Tuesday morning, reaching their lowest point since 2015 and contributing to an overall drop of over 30% since the beginning of the year.
The discrepancy between critical acclaim and player reception is notable. While Metacritic shows a user score of only 4.5 out of 10, outlets like Game8 awarded the game a 90/100 rating. This highlights a potential disconnect between critical reviews and consumer expectations. For a more in-depth analysis of Star Wars Outlaws, please see our review (link removed for brevity).
