Ubi Soft reports massive sales gain for Q1

Publisher Ubi Soft has also announced results for the first quarter today, revealing a massive rise in sales of 107 per cent, driven by the success of key titles including Splinter Cell, Ghost Recon and CSI.

Sales for the quarter jumped to â'¬66.5 million, compared with â'¬32 million in the same period last year. However, if currency fluctuations are removed from the equation (the same weak dollar which also hit Atari's figures today), the rise in like for like sales is closer to 142 per cent.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell was Ubi Soft's biggest title for yet another quarter, with the game clocking up 1.1 million additional sales during the three months June 30 - making for a total of some 4.7 million sales for the game across all four platforms since its launch last November.

Other big sellers for Ubi Soft included the company's other key Tom Clancy title, Ghost Recon, which sold 187,000 units during the quarter (and has now sold over 2 million units in total), TV license CSI, which sold 172,000 units, and kids game Bratz on PSone and GBA, which sold 149,000 units.

One interesting statistic is that Ubi Soft registered by far its most significant sales increase in North America, which accounted for 65 per cent of the company's sales - compared with 25 per cent in the same period last year. Revenues from internally developed titles are also on the up, representing a massive 88 per cent of the company's sales, as against 44 per cent last year - an unusually heavy emphasis on internal development for a publisher of Ubi Soft's size.

For the second quarter, Ubi Soft predicts sales of between â'¬52 and â'¬57 million euros, with net income of between â'¬19 and â'¬23 million euros.