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Ubisoft's first half 2010 financials show improvement, still in the red
The first half of Ubisoft's 2010-11 fiscal year (from April 1, 2010 through September 30, 2010) showed positive growth comparatively with the company's fiscal first half of 2009-10, with sales up 57 percent to €260 million ($354.25 million) over last year. Despite the increased sales, the French publisher still spent the first six months of fiscal 2010 losing money -- €89.8 million ($122.08 million) in total. Accounting for an enormous chunk of the company's first-half loss was "studios' roles and operations reorganization," which we take to mean "we've been building and staffing up our new studio, Ubisoft Toronto." The recent closure of Ubisoft Brazil assuredly helped mitigate the expense of creating a new base of operation, though apparently not enough to keep Ubi in the black. Also to blame: Tom Clancy's HAWX 2 and Ruse both performed below the publisher's expectations, in addition to "higher R&D [research and development] than expected." CEO Yves Guillemot also explained, "The market environment continues to be tough and, although our gross profit rose sharply, the increase was lower than we expected and we had to accelerate depreciations on certain released titles." But with Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood, Just Dance 2, and Michael Jackson: The Experience all scheduled for launch in the third quarter of Ubi's fiscal year, the publisher is confident that Q3 will be profitable.
