Ubisoft Entertainment SA

PAR:UBI

Earnings Call Transcript 2020-Q3

[Operator]

Good day, and welcome to the Ubisoft Q3 Fiscal '20 Sales Call. At this time, I would like to turn the conference over to Yves Guillemot. Please go ahead, sir.

[Yves Guillemot, Co]

Good afternoon, and good morning, everybody. Thank you for joining our conference call. While we are having a challenging year, it was great to see that our numbers in terms of active players, MAUs and PRI, on PC and consoles, were stable at a high level during the past quarter.As Frédérick will mention later, this reflects the amazing progress in overall engagement we have achieved over the years. And we are not standing still. Over the past few months, we have applied several changes to our organization. We have reinforced our editorial team to be more agile and better accompany our development teams. We have also brought additional seniority at the quality control level and a deeper integration of consumer research in our product pipeline to ensure solid differentiation for all our titles. All those actions will allow for an even stronger focus to ensure the best possible quality and strong marketability. As always, we will adapt our organization on an ongoing basis. Looking at next fiscal year, we are excited by the prospect of our lineup. The competitive environment will be challenging, but our production is progressing well, and our games will benefit from strong differentiation pillars.We also believe we have a well-balanced release schedule plan. It is not the first time we have had many releases in a given year with 5 AAAs in financial year '15. Since then, Ubisoft has continued to scale, and the market continues to absorb multiple successful releases every year. As a consequence, we are confident we will maximize both our production and marketing efficiency. And the year would not be limited to those 5 games, as we will also release titles with deep social layers like Roller Champions. We can't wait to show you more.Looking forward, the potential of the video game industry is immense. As an industry, we are finally reaching a mainstream audience, and we are taking a bigger and bigger share of players' leisure time. This is driven by the combination of games' unique mix of deep and always renewing social experiences, amazing and everlasting content creation from players, constant feedback loop from our communities to grow our games and outstanding accessibility brought by the multiplicity of platforms and business models. And this accessibility will be further enhanced by the rise of streaming in the coming years. To deliver on this massive opportunity, we already are leveraging the deep investment we made in our direct-to-players offering over the past 10 years.Our return on investment has been significant and has allowed us to massively grow players' time spent in our console and PC games from 2 billion hours in 2016 to 4.5 billion hours in 2019. In the same time frame, our teams built the following foundation effects: First, deep and amazing content. In this generation of consoles, we have launched 5 profitable new IPs. We have successfully transformed the Assassin's Creed franchise. We have delivered consistent growth for Far Cry and Rainbow Six Siege, 1 of the top 10 biggest games and eSport titles over the past 5 years. We have also executed the deep repositioning of our portfolio of franchises with now a strong footing in RPG and multiplayer, including core, PvP, and eSports.Second, digital transformation of Ubisoft. We now have recognized expertise in operating live services and in delivering to our thriving communities impressive road maps of content updates for multiple games. Third, our own services platform, Uplay fully integrated in all PC, console and streaming sites. Fourth, Uplay is also a significant part of our direct-to-players offering and is our fourth biggest digital platform in terms of revenue.Fifth, the scaled production capacity with strong collaboration patterns and loaded corporate culture. This culture is an amazing asset to attract and retain the best talent.Sixth, technology and IP ownerships that offers us leverage in the context of the growing number of platforms and long-term visibility.And seventh, a strong international expansion and a growing presence on multiple platforms.Much remains to be done. We are notably laser-focused on enhancing the social layers in our games.Still with video game publishers set to capture a growing share of leisure time and with Ubisoft's strong foundation of dependable assets, we believe we are ideally positioned to create great value for our players everywhere and on every platform over the coming years.So I will now let Frédérick detail our Q3 performance.

[Frédérick Duguet, Chief Financial Officer]

Thank you, Yves, and hello, everybody. Our Q3 net bookings reached EUR 456 million, down 26% year-on-year at constant exchange rates and above our target of approximately EUR 410 million. As a reminder, the year-on-year decrease mostly reflects the lower performance for Ghost Recon Breakpoint related to Assassin's Creed Odyssey as well as to a lesser extent, the launch of Starlink last year.Around half of this better-than-anticipated performance has been driven by our back-catalog games, notably Rainbow Six Siege, Assassin's Creed Odyssey The Crew 2 and Mario + Rabbids: Kingdom Battle as well as by the release of Just Dance 2020, which grew nicely. A high and stable level of unique players, MAUs and PRI on console and PC during the quarter was remarkable. It reflects the depths of our portfolio and the amazing progress in overall engagement we achieved. The other half of the outperformance was driven by a partnership signed during the quarter, which was originally expected to be accounted for in Q4.The Ghost Recon Breakpoint team is working hard to fine-tune the experience with each update. As of now, we have provided 4 title updates, which include bug fixing and new content. Our last update brought The Terminator with the release of a free event featuring new environment, enemies and dialogues, inspired by the original Terminator movie of 1984. As a result, we saw a nice uptick in engagement over the past week. Our next update, coming soon, will offer players the ability to personalize how they experience Ghost Recon Breakpoint, adapting it to their preferred play style.As I mentioned earlier, we have been pleasantly surprised by Just Dance 2020, with sell-through well ahead of Just Dance 2019. This can be attributable to a great track list with some of the hottest Billboard songs of 2019 and a perfectly delivered marketing strategy.One of the most striking example is what we achieved with our partnership with Billie Eilish. In the U.S., it resulted in one of the biggest challenges in TikTok history, bringing total views of hashtag Just Dance content to an impressive 4 billion.Over the first 9 months, total net bookings reached EUR 1.117 billion, down 19% (sic) [ 17.4% ] year-on-year at constant exchange rates. Over the same time frame, our back-catalog net bookings reached EUR 765 million, down 9% due to a high comparison base last year, which had seen the strong performance of Far Cry 5. Rainbow Six Siege is fully benefiting from its increased updated frequency and constant flow of new ideas. It continues to attract many new players and passed the 55 million registered players mark in January. Engagement was up nicely during the quarter with record MAUs for the month of December, an amazing performance of 4 years after launch. As a consequence, PRI grew strongly this past quarter and the year-on-year growth has even been accelerating versus Q2. Additionally, peak daily average revenue per user reached a record level twice during the quarter. On the eSports team, confirming its growing influence, Rainbow Six was ranked seventh most impactful PC game in calendar Q3 by The Esports Observer. We organized in November our first global event in Asia, which saw a 60% increase in viewership on Twitch and YouTube Asian channels. January saw the successful launch of our Road to Six Invitational 2020 event with dedicated map, amazing trailer and our first full Battle Pass, which offers a free and a premium real-world tracks. Both have been very positively received, which led to another record in peak daily average revenue per user. This bodes very well for the upcoming Six Invitational eSports event to be held in February in a sold-out venue, full of fans, during which we will be unveiling exciting new things.Benefiting from its RPG transformation, Assassin's Creed Odyssey has continued its winning streak during Christmas even without a new content update. Total sell-through, daily player engagement and PRI for the first 9 months of the year are respectively up around 50%, 60% and 140% versus Assassin's Creed Origins last year. We also saw a solid performance across the whole franchise, notably from Origins.Concerning The Division 2, we released Episode 2 Pentagon: The Last Castle in October with major improvements that had a nice impact on daily activity. We will release Episode 3 this month, kicking off a new narrative thread, new missions, bringing players to Coney Island. More news in the upcoming weeks, so stay tuned. The Crew 2 benefited from the release of the Blazing Shots free update in November. And in December, the game saw its biggest month of activity ever, with record MAUs, driven by the weekly semis events. Brawlhalla, our free-to-play games, supports cross-platform play between PS4, Xbox One, PC and Switch since October. The team is also working on a mobile version for 2020. The game enjoyed a strong momentum in Q3, with December the best month we have had to date, and a new record in daily active players last weekend.Over the first 9 months, total digital net bookings reached EUR 889 million, down 1%, representing 80% of our total net bookings. PRI was up 7% to EUR 474 million, representing 42% of our total net bookings. Excluding mobile, PRI was up 14% over 9 months. On the platform basis, revenues from Uplay continued to grow very strongly, up 73% and represented more than 40% of our PC net bookings.As highlighted in prior quarters, our mobile business continues to have a quiet year on the new releases and partnership side. As a reminder, our Q3 mobile revenue last year were positively impacted by our licensing business in Asia. Among new releases this quarter, Rayman Mini ranked in the top 20, most downloaded games on Apple Arcade in 2019. Additionally, we released Might & Magic: Era of Chaos (sic) [ Might & Magic Heroes: Era of Chaos ] in the western market in November. The game has had a great run in China, with over $200 million gross revenue since launch in 2017. Finally, we announced 3 days ago that we reinforced our position in the idle games with the acquisition of Kolibri Games. The studio is recognized for the longevity of its flagship game, Idle Miner Tycoon, which is a unique asset in this segment. Kolibri will bring us its great expertise in live mobile operations and will allow us to build synergies on the user acquisition side.Looking at Q4, we expect net bookings at around EUR 333 million, down 50% versus last year. As a reminder, the vast majority of the drop is explained by a strong release schedule last year with the launches of The Division 2 and Far Cry New Dawn. And for the full year, we are confirming our targets. Net bookings of approximately EUR 1.450 billion and non-IFRS operating income between EUR 20 million and EUR 50 million.We also confirmed our target for fiscal '21. Net bookings of approximately EUR 2.600 billion and non-IFRS operating income of approximately EUR 600 million. As mentioned in October, fiscal '21 will benefit from a great lineup and continued growth in PRI, Asia and PC.We expect 3 of the 5 AAAs to be released in fiscal Q3 and 2 in Q4. This is a slightly different release mix than what we had originally anticipated back in October. These kinds of adjustments are part of all publishers' normal timing processes, especially this early in the year. This evolution is not related to competition, as it is always moving. We can confirm we have a good visibility on the quality of our games at launch, and we believe this new template will maximize our games potential. We will provide more information in May at the time of our earnings publication.I now hand over the call back to Yves.

[Yves Guillemot, Co]

Thank you, Frédérick. We are confident of our fiscal year '21 lineup. We'll deliver amazing experiences to players. E3 would be a great opportunity to demonstrate the quality and potential of our upcoming lineup. We will also benefit from the arrival of the new generation of consoles, which will be a great catalyst for the industry momentum in 2020.With the immense opportunities offered by our industry, we believe our focus on continuing to build amazing content and our direct relation with players would significantly grow our audiences and players' recurring investment.As such, we expect to continue to create major value for our communities, employees and shareholders over the coming years. We are now ready to answer your questions.

[Operator]

[Operator Instructions] Our first question comes from Nicolas Langlet of Exane.

[Nicolas Langlet, Research Analyst]

I've got 2 questions, please. The first one on the editorial team change. So you mentioned this change, and from an internal point of view, how big is this change? And when do you expect to see the first benefits of it? Second question on the player recurring investment. So excluding mobile, it was fairly stable in Q3. You mentioned growth acceleration for [ R Six ], good performance of AC Odyssey. So interested to understand what was the offset in Q3? And then looking at Q4, how do you expect the PRI trend to evolve? Because on one hand, you will have [ R Six ] probably still a good momentum, but the comparable basis will be quite difficult. So just interested to see what do you expect on that?

[Yves Guillemot, Co]

So thank you for your questions. So on the editorial team, we had to make it evolve and increase the number of seniority in the team because the number of projects they had to follow and the size of the games were growing all the time. So we increased the number of people, and it's now well organized to follow all the flow of future games that is coming. So we will see a certain number of results in the coming years. We have to remember that this team has been extremely powerful in bringing 5 new IPs in the last 5 years. And as proof to the industry that it was able to create very high-quality games, now we are making it evolve as a natural evolution of the team.

[Frédérick Duguet, Chief Financial Officer]

In terms of impact, we can say that it's, of course, an evolution and changes that we -- that is important for the medium-to-longer term for the company, but we expect the first benefits to happen this year. And Nicolas, to your question on PRI in Q3, so yes, when we look at Q3, we've seen, excluding mobile, that it's been flat, which considering the comparison of Ghost Recon versus Assassin's Creed Odyssey is a remarkable performance, I will say. Rainbow has been growing. It's true to say that its growth has been accelerating, and we've seen the impact of regular events and high-quality collections impacting very positively the performance of Rainbow. So we're happy to see a good momentum. So beside the fact that in terms of PRI, Assassin's Creed Odyssey was bigger last year than Ghost Recon Breakpoint this year, we also need to take into account the fact that last year we had released Marching Fire that was an expansion on For Honor, and that we didn't release the same equivalent content on For Honor this year. In terms of Q4, yes, we see the good momentum with, again, Rainbow Six Siege. The implementation of the full Battle Pass package with Road to Six Invitational is really promising. We've seen active player and engagement growing strongly in January relative to last year with an even stronger growth on PRI. Now we, of course, need to wait until the Road to Six Invitational is completed to analyze the impact of the different components. But so far, so good.So in terms of Q4 PRI, besides this expected strong performance of Rainbow Six Siege, we should expect lower PRI due to the fact that last year we had released the expansion of Far Cry New Dawn, and we also expect, of course, Ghost Recon Breakpoint point at this stage in terms of PRI contributing less than Assassin's Creed Odyssey.

[Operator]

Our next question comes from Charles Scotti of Kepler.

[Charles-Louis Scotti]

I've got 3 questions. The first one on Rainbow Six Siege. Can you share with us some data point on the recently released paid Battle Pass, such as the attach rate, the conversion rate of the Battle Pass? My second question on back-catalog's net bookings. It declined high single digits in Q3 and your Q4 guidance suggests another high single-digit decline in my view. Shall we expect the same magnitude next year? And my last question on the pipeline for next fiscal year, if I remember correctly, you were supposed to release 3 AAA games between July and December. So it means that actually 1 AAA game has shifted from one quarter to another. So can you give us a little bit more color on that? And how do you feel confident on your new release net bookings forecast for next year?

[Yves Guillemot, Co]

I'll take the first question, then Frédérick will take the 2 others. On Rainbow Six, as it is the beginning for the Battle Pass, we can't give you more information at the moment. We will know a lot more after our Six Invitational where the Battle Pass will actually end. So it's too early to give you too many -- too much information now.

[Frédérick Duguet, Chief Financial Officer]

On the back-catalog, yes, you're right, solid high single-digit decline in Q3. And yes, we can expect about the same decline into fiscal '21. In terms of the lineup for next year, in terms of AAA games, yes, we're very happy in terms of the visibility that we see on the development of each and every game. All of them are coming with strong element of differentiation, strong premises and identity, which, as we said earlier, we think is important to sustain stronger marketability. We think this game then has, call it, [ taste ] to target important audiences in a distinctive and efficient manner. Now it's -- we have revised the date for one title to move it to Q4. And we think that, as we said earlier in the call, this new template will allow to maximize the potential for each and every of these games.

[Operator]

Our next question comes from Robert Berg of Berenberg.

[Robert Berg, Analyst]

Yes, I have a few questions, if I can. Apologies for the obvious one. You did have a nice Q3 beat. And even with the timing of the partnership revenues you mentioned from Q4 to Q3, you're reiterating the full year. Anything we need to be aware of here? Or do you still factor in a normal level of prudency? And also, would you be able to give, a follow-up to that, some more details on that partnership you mentioned, just what it is effectively? And then on the back-catalog, we have had some delays of competitive titles. Do you think your back-catalog, particularly Rainbow Six, can actually benefit from the shift out of competitive titles? Do you see that going forward? And then just a quick follow-up, again, on your last -- the last question there on the timetable for your releases. I think you said the 3 delayed games, with 3 to come out in Q2 and Q3, was it one of these games that you're now saying has shifted into Q4?

[Frédérick Duguet, Chief Financial Officer]

So on the guidance for Q4, yes, we will say that we think that our guidance is reasonable. It's right that we've been happy to take some advance on the catalog in Q3, keeping in mind that, yes -- like you said, half of the overperformance is due to this partnership that we move forward to Q3.For Q4, so we think it's a reasonable guidance. As always, it's an important quarter for Rainbow, and it's starting well with a good month of January and a promising Road to Six Invitational. It's true to say that competition is pretty light for this coming quarter. And now in terms of perspective, we still need to stay cautious on the numbers on the Ghost Recon Breakpoint. We -- as you know will come, in the course of 2020, with different answers to the feedback of the players, and the next update will be the first answer related to the -- some of the important feedbacks we got back in October. But we need to wait until we see a positive shift to the community sentiment and acquisition curve to see whether the response is good for the future of Ghost Recon.In terms of partnership?

[Yves Guillemot, Co]

What we can say is that it's part of the deals we do more and more now with platforms. And there are more and more people now that are taking our products like we did deals with Epic, with NVIDIA, with Google and other parties, and it's something that is more recurrent now in our business. And it's really creating a higher future for the industry and for our brands.

[Frédérick Duguet, Chief Financial Officer]

And yes, it's very important to see that we have -- we see the growing value of our brands. And that really helps us value the -- our diversified catalog vis-à-vis a higher number of partners' platforms and into more territories and geographies.To your question on the back-catalog on Rainbow, in Q3, vis-à-vis competition, we see that if we think about Assassin's Creed Odyssey and Rainbow Six Siege being among the best overperformers, it's really a, again, tribute to the quality of these brands. Rainbow Six Siege, as we said previously, has accelerated in the number of events and that really allows us to bring high-quality collection for each event.That's why we bet new records in terms of revenue per user in -- at Halloween and then Christmas. We've seen a constantly acceleration of PRI and that goes together with a stronger growth also over time of viewership. So this shows that I think the success of Rainbow is really coming from the work of the team.And on the third question on the lineup, so yes, we moved the title to Q4. I would say that it's not surprising that early in the year, we adjust our release schedule to optimize the window for each and every game. We -- this is indeed one of the delayed games from fiscal '20 that we moved to Q4. And we see that today the development of these games, including this one, is very promising.

[Operator]

Our next question comes from Michael Ng of Goldman Sachs.

[Michael Ng, Research Analyst]

Great. I just have one for Yves and one for Frédérick. Yves, could you just talk about the prospects for horizontal and vertical consolidation in the video game industry? And then for Frederic, I was just wondering if you could tell us a little bit more about the contribution from Green Panda in the quarter on the mobile side and your expectations for Kolibri Games?

[Yves Guillemot, Co]

Thank you for your questions. In fact -- so the industry, as you can see, is growing a lot now with -- as it's becoming more and more mass market. And there will be plenty of opportunities for us to consolidate in buying companies. They will -- we feel that there will be more and more opportunities to do deals with all the different platforms to actually enhance the size of our brands.Now in terms of consolidation of AAA players, we don't see that many happening soon, but we will keep watching at what -- how the business is growing. Frédérick maybe...

[Frédérick Duguet, Chief Financial Officer]

Yes. So on the Green Panda and Kolibri, yes, we're happy to have 2 leading companies of the idle segment now in -- at Ubisoft. They are very complementary because Green Panda has proved its capacity to hit many releases, hit releases, very regularly. And they have disputed expertise in terms of user acquisition and ad monetization. And Kolibri is a completely different animal because its -- it has a very long tail, a very strong focus in terms of operating services. And that's why this game is probably one of the biggest, if not the biggest, living cycle in this segment, with also a strong and growing expertise on in-game monetization. I'm not in a position to give you the very detail in terms of contribution for Green Panda, but it's doing well. As for Kolibri, what we can say is that, in 2019, net booking was around EUR 40 million. And as we always do, we're looking at companies that are bringing operating margins that are well ahead of Ubisoft operating margin, taking the fiscal '19 operating margin as a day's reference.

[Operator]

Our next question comes from Ken Rumph of Jefferies.

[Kenneth Charles Rumph, Equity Analyst]

Three questions, if I may. Firstly, you referred to Uplay being now your fourth digital platform. I presume you're comparing it to, say, Steam or the Xbox digital store, PlayStation store, that kind of thing. Secondly, Asia is a smaller proportion of sales. Is that simply an effect of a comparison with a year with more new launches, and therefore, that new launches have a higher Asian component, whereas back-catalog and live operations have a more Europe and America orientation? Or is there some other trend? And finally, on the subject of China, you have operations there. Obviously, the game industry as a whole, a lot of our creation work is done in China. How long do you think disruption would have to go on nationally in China for that to begin to potentially impact game schedules?

[Yves Guillemot, Co]

Thank you for your questions. So yes, Ubisoft is the full digital platforms when we look at the other platforms, like PSN, Microsoft and Steam. So that's where we were able to be. On the China front, it had some effects on us because we have -- our studio was closed for a week. Now they will reopen only next Monday. But at the moment, it's easy to handle. Now we don't know what's going to happen. What we -- what you can expect is that we will be able to work with all the other studios we have in case it's too long.

[Frédérick Duguet, Chief Financial Officer]

As for your question on Asia, so our Asian business is doing well across the board. Japan is progressing well, where eSport is picking up for Rainbow in a nice manner. And China is our fifth biggest community for Rainbow and Assassin's Creed. Now in terms of comparison versus last year, as a reminder, we had signed some licensing and partnership agreement last year in Asia for -- on our mobile business, and that's what affects the comparison relative to last year.

[Operator]

Our next question comes from Matthew Walker of Crédit Suisse.

[Matthew John Walker, Research Analyst]

So just in terms of the game schedule now you're saying, is it 3 in Q3 and then 2 in Q4? Second question is, we've noticed that there's been a bit of progress on Beyond Good & Evil 2. Is that going to be 1 of the 5? Or is that considered -- is that -- it's supposed to be coming soon? So what does that actually mean? Is it in FY '20 releases and FY '21, if you could give a bit more detail there? And then lastly, obviously, something didn't quite work on the consumer testing process for Breakpoint. How have you improved the testing process since that happened? And obviously, there were conflicting signals from the testing process around, say, RPG elements. How do you know what signals to pay attention to, because you wanted to introduce RPG elements and that didn't quite work? How do you handle those signals when there's something you want to do? Do you think it's the right to do? But the feedback from the community is saying, "No, we don't like that."

[Yves Guillemot, Co]

Okay. Thank you for your questions. So yes, 3 games in Q3 and 2 games in Q4. On BGE2, we can't give you more information, except the fact that it's not going to be in the 5 games we announced -- we will announce.On the consumer testing, what we've been able to do is to put also more seniority in the team, so that we -- and also more locations to handle the test, so that we can have a better perception of what people think about the game and what we should do. And really, the answer to many of those questions is to be able to do testing -- to test the games early in the process, so that we can tune the different aspect of the game to fit with players' needs. Many of the problematics we encountered can be solved, even RPG elements in a game like the games we do. It can be tuned to the point that it will be appreciated by players if it's really well integrated and fits with what players can -- want to play.

[Operator]

Your next question comes from Ryan Gee of Bank of America.

[Ryan Gee, Vice President of US Equity Research]

I guess just a few for Frédérick here. So on the profit target for fiscal '21, I believe, one of the reasons for the low profitability this year was that you had a lot of marketing expense for titles that are moved out to the next year. So I'm curious, do you basically have to re-spend all that marketing all over again in fiscal '21? Or do you benefit and perhaps see better marketing margins ahead for those titles? That's the first question.The second, as we think about Watch Dogs: Legion versus Watch Dogs 2 and maybe Quarantine versus something like R Six Siege, is it fair to assume those titles grow versus their predecessors next year? Or what's implied in your EUR 2.6 billion outlook? And then lastly, on PRI, it's been some time since we've gotten some visibility into the makeup there. Could you just help us rank order what are the biggest drivers right now for PRI, which games are contributing the most to that business?

[Frédérick Duguet, Chief Financial Officer]

So in terms of the main reason for the low profitability in fiscal '20 is mostly related to the low performance of Ghost Recon Breakpoint. And also, to some extent, the fact that we postponed 3 AAA games to next year. So we only had 1 triple AAA games this year under our expectations. So yes, we had some prespending in marketing, but this is, so far, good use of our marketing. And we don't think there will be redundancies in driving more marketing to launch our games. Like we said back in October, our focus is really to come with titles that will have this year's strong element of differentiation and strong marketability and that shall sustain favorably the way we spend our marketing for the audience that we target.In terms of Watch Dog: Legion Versus Watch Dogs 2, we'll give more information in May. What we can say is that Watch Dog: Legion is coming with a very strong promise, which is the Play As Anyone, which we -- all playable character feature, which we think can be a breakthrough for the industry. So of course, we need to execute it very well, making sure that it's fun for players and make sure that the players understand very well the purpose of the game play. So that's what we are looking at very strongly for the year to come.

[Yves Guillemot, Co]

And we are really, really pleased with what we see at the moment under the evolution of the game.

[Frédérick Duguet, Chief Financial Officer]

In terms of the biggest drivers for PRI, Rainbow Six Siege is still the #1. Like we said last year, it used to be having more than 50% of the overall PRI, now it's less than 50%. The second biggest contributor has been -- the great achievement over the last 1.5 years has been Assassin's Creed Odyssey because the playtime has been improving so much with a very strong and smart post-launch program over 6 to 7 months -- even 8 to 9 months, sorry, so longer than what we've ever done on Assassin -- on Assassin's Creed that has translated into a very strong PRI contribution.

[Operator]

Our next question comes from Matilde Durazzano of Barclays.

[Matilde Durazzano, Research Analyst]

I want to ask about the challenging environment you had[Audio Gap] more competitive now than it was in 2018 to add another big launch, big releases. Do you think that the coming year is more competitive compared to then? Or is it approximately the same?

[Yves Guillemot, Co]

We consider it's approximately the same. Remember, last year, we had a fierce competition as well with Red Dead Redemption in front of Assassin's Creed. So we consider it's a good competitive year, but probably not more competition than what we had before.

[Operator]

[Operator Instructions] And we will now take our next question from Mike Hickey of The Benchmark Company.

[Michael Joseph Hickey, Senior Equity Analyst]

First one, I guess, now that you've had the opportunity and experience in making the games on next-gen consoles, I was hopeful you could share with us, I guess, your view sort of the top benefits you see from these new machines in terms of driving purchase behavior from players. And then with the software launches over the holiday, I would imagine that you'd going to be aggressive in trying to find bundling opportunities with new consoles. Just curious if you could speak to this. And then I have a follow-up.

[Yves Guillemot, Co]

It was difficult to hear a part of your question. I think you spoke about bundling with new consoles. So this is happening on a regular basis in the industry. It depends very much on the types of deals that we do with the first parties, and how they use our IPs to push their consoles. So we do that on a regular basis, but we can't give you more info on what's on the way. Now you spoke about the purchase behavior, can you elaborate a bit more

[Frédérick Duguet, Chief Financial Officer]

On the next-gen, is that your question?

[Michael Joseph Hickey, Senior Equity Analyst]

Yes, yes, yes. Since you guys have been making games on the next-gen consoles, just curious your thoughts on sort of the top benefits of the new hardware for players in terms of why they want to buy the new machines essentially?

[Yves Guillemot, Co]

So what we are going to do, as we do regularly, is to take advantage of the new -- the potential of those new machines, and that potential is really high. So we think players will be able to be very impressed by the quality of what those new consoles would bring to the market.What will be new also in this industry is that those consoles will be running almost all the back-catalog of the previous consoles. So it will be something new in the industry. It will help the old generation to continue to be big consoles on the market for the years to come. And so that's something new that will actually grow the market a lot. So we will have new people, new -- a lots of new machines sold and lots of marketing done on the market to promote those machines that will be more powerful. And on top, we will have an increase of the total addressable market. Thanks to the fact that the old console will remain very strong console for all the games that will be published. I don't know if it answers your question?

[Michael Joseph Hickey, Senior Equity Analyst]

Last one from -- kind of, but I'll take it. Last one for me on the -- again, on the upcoming consoles with Sony and Microsoft. If you feel that you have the opportunity, I guess, to get a larger share of the revenue or monies from player download of your games or live service monetization. I guess thinking about how Epic, kind of, recently was a pretty big disruptor to the traditional share as they competed with Steam, but if you see, I guess, a similar opportunity on console taking shape for you over time?

[Yves Guillemot, Co]

Yes, we have been able, with each new generation, to increase our share of the global market. So we hope we will be able to continue to grow our market share. Thanks to these new consoles coming. Because as Ubisoft is using always the revolutions of those new consoles, we are generating a good position to take -- to convince new consumers to come and join the company.

[Michael Joseph Hickey, Senior Equity Analyst]

When I said share, sorry, guys, I meant the revenue split between you and your partner, your partner being Sony or Microsoft in this case on the new consoles, the traditional share being sort of 70:30 or 75:25. Epic with their game service decided to share 88%, they took 12%. The question was, do you see a scenario or opportunity where you get a larger piece of the economics of your games downloaded or the live service monies for your gains on the next-gen consoles?

[Yves Guillemot, Co]

So we can't give you information on that front. There's a real trend to -- there's a good evolution because there are more and more platforms now that are happening and streaming is going to be important, but we can't elaborate on that more.

[Operator]

Our next question comes from Ken Rumph of Jefferies.

[Kenneth Charles Rumph, Equity Analyst]

A quick follow-up. It could be my memory, but I thought the plan for the 5 games originally had been from September until the end of March. Maybe I was misunderstanding whether the month of September was included in that. So I have something that was going to be in September now slipped into the October to December period. As I said, that could be my misunderstanding of whether it was September that was included or not?

[Frédérick Duguet, Chief Financial Officer]

Your -- hello, Ken, your understanding was -- is correct. We had said that they will be between September and March.

[Operator]

Our next question comes from Jeff Cohen of Stephens Inc.

[Jeffrey A. Cohen, Analyst]

I jumped on a bit late. So if this has already been asked and answered, I apologize. Could you talk a little bit about what you're seeing in terms of Uplay+ adoption? And maybe any differences that you're seeing in engagement from players in that subscription versus your overall player base?

[Yves Guillemot, Co]

Yes. Uplay+ engagement is higher than when players only buy one game from time to time. And what -- it's a long-term prospect and long-term engagement for us. What we see is that there's a good trend coming. And so we -- it's another way for us to get new customers to actually try our games. And what we expect is that in trying those games, they will also learn more about the different IPs that we have. So we are going -- we are really going to focus on growing that new model.

[Operator]

[Operator Instructions] We have no further questions over the phone at this time.

[Yves Guillemot, Co]

Thank you very much for all your questions, and have a good afternoon or good day.

[Operator]

Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes today's call. Thank you for your participation. You may now disconnect.