US, July 28, 2009 - Slowing sales on its casual Nintendo DS games is causing Ubisoft to rethink its strategy.
Ubisoft CEO Yves Guillmont announced during a financial call yesterday that DS sales are down a whopping 67% compared to last year. The company expects handheld sales to slump as the market continues to crash and burn.
Ubisoft plans to remedy this by shifting its focus onto other platforms where casual games are successful, such as the Wii, and apparently, Microsoft's Natal camera.
"The casual business is changing rapidly, and we are still interested in it, but we have to reinvent it this year. We already have a big shift from DS to Wii this year and it will continue with the Wii and also the Xbox 360 with the new 3D camera next year," Guillemot stated during the call.
Alain Corre, executive director at Ubisoft, expanded a bit on Guillemot's comments saying the company expects to see an increase in casual Wii sales over the next year.
"This year, we expect the Wii to represent over 40 percent of our sales on casual games versus last year when it was at 18 percent, so it's a big change. The Wii is contributing much more to our casual sales than the DS," he said.
It's interesting to see that Ubisoft is already positioning the Natal camera as a casual device. That's probably music to Microsoft's ears.
