France's Ubisoft pushes back new 'Assassin's Creed' game to February / Photo: © AFP
France's Ubisoft pushes back new 'Assassin's Creed' game to February
The latest instalment of the hugely popular "Assassin's Creed" video game series has been delayed to February instead of coming out in November as planned, its French publisher Ubisoft said Wednesday.
The company also warned that along with lower-than-expected sales for its "Star Wars Outlaws" released in late August, it would fail to meet its financial targets.
"Assassin's Creed Shadows will now be released on February 14, 2025," Ubisoft said.
"While the game is feature complete, the learnings from the Star Wars Outlaws release led us to provide additional time to further polish the title," requiring development teams to be "fully mobilised" on rolling out updates to the game.
"Our second quarter performance fell short of our expectations, prompting us to address this swiftly and firmly, with an even greater focus on a player-centric, gameplay-first approach," co-founder and CEO Yves Guillemot said in the statement.
The setbacks are the latest challenge for the French firm after slipping into the red in its 2022-2023 financial year before returning to profit last year.
But it has already announced dozens of layoffs this year alone as it struggles with an industry-wide downturn.
Ubisoft said it now expected net bookings, its preferred measure of sales excluding deferred revenues, of 350-370 million euros ($390-$410 million) in its second quarter, down from 500 million previously.
(A.Laurent--LPdF)
