Ubisoft’s Microtransactions Have Out-Earned Their Digital Game Sales

Megalith

Megalith

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For the first time, microtransactions brought in more revenue than digital game sales alone for Ubisoft. Player recurring investment, or the sale of in-game items, DLC, season passes, and subscriptions, was responsible for ~$202.6 million during the first two quarters of the year, making up 51 percent of total digital income. That category of digital sales alone jumped by 83 percent year-over-year.

Digital game sales also saw an increase from the same period last year, this time of 57 percent year-over-year. Two of its big releases during the period saw significant digital sales. South Park: The Fractured But Whole alone came in at roughly 50 percent digital, while the recently released Assassin's Creed: Origins sold 35 percent of its copies digitally. For comparison's sake, Ubisoft says the preceding game in the series, Assassin's Creed: Syndicate, only sold 15 percent digitally.
 
It's getting bad, and what's worse... numbers like this are encouraging it :(

Not far off from now...
Prologue $59.99
Main Story $249.99
Side stories relevant to character X $29.99 X= any number 1-7+
After credit scene $9.99
Play after credits $39.99
New Game Plus $59.99

and so on and so forth...
 
Well that's way above what I could ever imagine microtransactions profiting, no wonder if they push microtransactions down our throats if that's such a revenue mine. Unfortunately people buy that shit.
 
Obviously I don't understand wtf 'micro' is because to me DLC and season's passes ain't that small.
 
otherweeb said:
Obviously I don't understand wtf 'micro' is because to me DLC and season's passes ain't that small.
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Its not DLC for game play, its the damn skins / texture packs, upgraded guns from in-game, XP boosters, or whatever else entice people to pay for extra items (meaning not more game just aesthetics or progress changing options.) This is disgusting.....because we already pay $60 per game. It just goes to show you that the pay-to-win model works for the studios/ publishers. This is not cool.
SticKx911 said:
Fuck. Good time to be getting too old to game I suppose....
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Im with you on this one......I think I'm going to start a new hobby or something. :mad::cry::(
 
Bigdady92 said:
I can't wait for the 19.99 game that comes out with over $100 in DLC

"You want more mosnters than the default 3?" 19.99
"you want more character slots?" Only 3.99
"Oh you want color instead of black and white?" Digital Rainbow Back of $6.66
Click to expand...

We already have $5-10 games with $99 in DLC. You don't have to wait.
 
Wait - I just re-read this. This headline makes no sense compared to the body of text.

"Digital game sales also saw an increase from the same period last year, this time of 57 percent year-over-year. Two of its big releases during the period saw significant digital sales. South Park: The Fractured But Whole alone came in at roughly 50 percent digital, while the recently released Assassin's Creed: Origins sold 35 percent of its copies digitally. For comparison's sake, Ubisoft says the preceding game in the series, Assassin's Creed: Syndicate, only sold 15 percent digitally."

That statement does not indicate that DLC/Microtransactions have outsold the core games. It just states that there are more digital copies being sold then physical.
 
Sell everything digitally because physical copies cost too much.

ME:A bought box... Contained CD-key??

Surely all digital means its cheaper? Nope they just spend more on marketing.

Development is usually 25-35% of the launch cost in my digging. And micro transactions just mean more profit for the next launch.
 
I think if you look at the actual figures this is not surprising. You've only got between 30-50% of all sales being digital, and you are for some reason including season passes (which often cost almost as much as the game itself) in the list of "microtransactions".

I would love to see figures on the actual microtransaction sales - digital currency purchases, skin/loot box purchases, etc.
 
Ugh.

This will only continue to incentivize game studios to release terrible games.

Who are these people who willingly spend on microtransactions? They are the cause of all this. They are the problem.

If people wouldn't spend money on microtransactions that garbage would be gone from new games in an instant.
 
SomeoneElse said:
Its not DLC for game play, its the damn skins / texture packs, upgraded guns from in-game, XP boosters, or whatever else entice people to pay for extra items (meaning not more game just aesthetics or progress changing options.) ....
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You and I might think that way but Megalith quoted Ubisoft directly in the first post. Anything other than the base game is a microtransaction to Ubisoft. Tomaytoe Tomahtoe

edit: player recurring investment seems to be their buzzword
 
misleading POST

they saw a big increase in digital sales .. NOT just Micro transactions .. Ubisoft uses Steam as well as several other digital partners to distribute its games https://support.ubi.com/en-US/Faqs/Details/kA030000000ekN9CAI?name=approved-retail-vendor-list

.. why the increase? .. they have been selling more copies digitally ...
and if ya watch the Uplay shop alone they have sales all the time on their games ..


and there are alot of Smart consumers that look for Digital sales

not many ppl buy DVD copies anymore for PC ..just Downloaded AC origins and the new South park game from Uplay the other night .. speed was just as fast if not faster then Steam
 
-=SOF=-WID99 said:
misleading POST

they saw a big increase in digital sales .. NOT just Micro transactions
Click to expand...

It is misleading but not because of what you're saying. They do differentiate between "microtransactions" and digital game sales, but the problem is that there is a LOT rolled into that number that the article called "microtransactions" - including Season Passes, subscriptions and "advertising". So it's a misleading representation of microtransactions - realistically it's just digital "non-base-game" sales.

I am sure Ubisoft is loving this article, though. Almost makes me wonder if they paid for it to be written.
 
Game Sales, especially Physical Media, are often one-shots on a company balance sheet...chased by the decline of the titles sale price over "X" amount of time.

But DLC is almost exclusively digital and cannot be transferred, and rarely does DLC ever drop in price unless it's for some tanking online-only title. What are the DLC packs for any Call of Duty game discounted at today in 2017? Exactly.
 
the best business model has always been robbing people... 99 cents at a time.

That's how the 99 cent store operates.
 
I can imagine coming to other consumer items: Tesla with a "PAY $1,000 FOR ADDITIONAL POWER", Siri with a "$50 DOLLARS FOR A FRENCH ACCENT", Logitech "FASTER DPI FOR $0.50", etc.
 
2 points :

1 - DLC/Microtransactions/RecurringSubscriberRevenue is very BAD for gamers and gaming.

2 - Of course digital sales are up, all the boxes contain either no media or a game that cant be played without a DRM client or downloading a patch from said DRM client. Wow look at how amazing digital distribution is growing. Its a forced downgrade , so they can simply resell us the products as a double dip minus the DRM down the road. I'm starting to think the appropriate way to enjoy gaming is to be 2 years behind the current releases.
 
mshckd.gif


Fuck microtransactions. If you hate them, stop buying them. I did.
 
Your headline is false. It makes it sound like Ubisoft makes more from selling skins and unlock packs than core game sales. Microtransactions did not makeup 51% of digital sales. DLC as a whole made up 51% of sales, as evident by "in-game items, DLC, season passes, and subscriptions,"... My definition of microtransactions, which seems to align with most others here, is the sort of items typically bought with an in-game currency that works out to typically be $1-$2, typically cosmetic items or other in-game trinkets, booster packs, loot crates, etc.. Season passes and other gameplay DLC, IMO, aren't considered microtransactions. Of that ~$200 million, I want to know how much of that is from season passes and other gameplay DLC. I bet most of it, which makes that number not overly surprising. It seems that as a rough average about 30% of a games sales are digital, 70% physical. The spread would be even more in favor of physical if you were to consider second-hand sales of physical copies. If even half of the people who own the game purchase a season pass, that would be 20% more digital season pass sales than core digital game sales. A strong second hand market leaves the possibility that one physical copy sale (for Ubisoft) could lead to multiple season pass sales as that physical copy goes from owner to owner. Considering all that, I think I'd be more surprised to hear that DLC sales did not surpass digital core game sales (at least on AAA games releasing on consoles).
 
It was upon reading this that I realized for the first time in decades I've bought and played fewer new games in the past 2 years than almost any 2 month period previous. It isn't that I dislike games, the ones I own are still getting plenty of hours churned into them. However there just isn't much worth spending money on for reasons like this and frankly I am finding it easier to spend money that would normally be spent on a game on projects or tools for projects. Currently building a 1000sf workshop that I plan on being 80% powered by solar. I figure I'll finish around spring.
 
The consumers have voted with their wallets for what they want. Moar DLC, Moar microtransactions!
 
I can excuse a handful of lockbox driven free to play MMOs... a couple get it more or less right, and pay for actual on going development. Cryptic the developers of Star Trek Online... I thought where pure evil when PWE bought them out. However they have a great balance... play for free if you have the time. There is nothing they lock behind paywalls, you can buy everything in game with in game currency, funny enough including lockbox "keys". (So your basically buying pay items from other players that don't have the time or feel like grinding in game currency) All content they add is free for all to play.. and they haven't done a bad job of adding new completely free content fairly regular, even hiring actual named Trek actors for voice acting work.

Single player games now though ??? wtf why would people buy into that. To many idiotic gamers making DLC / Micro Transactions profitable for them on games where that shit just doesn't belong.

Side note as well... almost 20% of Ubisofts sales where for Nintendo Switch titles... which is just a shade under their xbox sales. That is no joke... Nintendo is killing it this time out.
 
...and that's why the largest portion of money I've spent on PC games in past years has gone to GOG.
 
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Pyro411 said:
It's getting bad, and what's worse... numbers like this are encouraging it :(

Not far off from now...
Prologue $59.99
Main Story $249.99
Side stories relevant to character X $29.99 X= any number 1-7+
After credit scene $9.99
Play after credits $39.99
New Game Plus $59.99

and so on and so forth...
Click to expand...

Or you could wait for a GoG/Steam sale on the GoTY edition and be done with it, like i did with Witcher 3
 
It's official then, game publishers have learned how to become drug dealers, and it's working.
 
LOL! PC Master Race for the WIN! :D LOL! Yep, pc games are cheaper, LOL!
 
Well, I reckoned the end was neigh when I saw the story about the guy that mortgaged his house to buy virtual property in 2nd Life. He then put in a virtual dance club.

Second life! For people who suck at real life.
 
Here's an idea: How about sell games for $30-$40 and then if you like it, buy the DLC Expansion Pack or w/e the heck it is for like $20 extra? I'd much rather try a game for less money and be more inclined to pay more for additional content rather than shelling out $60 for something I have no idea for and then 40$ for additional content upgrades that should have been part of the game anyways.
 
kidstechno3 said:
I'd much rather try a game for less money and be more inclined to pay more for additional content rather than shelling out $60 for something I have no idea for and then 40$ for additional content upgrades that should have been part of the game anyways.
Click to expand...

Called F2P games, the ultimate game publisher drug.
 
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