Ubisoft Acquires Free-to-Play Studio Following Q1 Fiscals

Ubisoft has announced that it has acquired free-to-play game developer Owlient to beef up the publisher's online presence significantly, as the company sees a year-on-year sales drop for the fiscal quarter.

Total sales for the first quarter of 2011-12 came to €103 million, compared to the €161 million made in the same time last year. That's a worrying drop of 36.3 per cent over the last 12 months - but the blow is softened by the fact that Ubisoft was only expecting €90 million out of this quarter anyway.

Healthier-than-expected sales of Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood over the Spring season, along with launches of Child of Eden and Michael Jackson: The Experience were pinpointed as reasons for the over-performance.

The French publisher, currently #3 independent publisher in Europe (and #4 in the US), hopes to rack up €99 million in sales in this upcoming quarter, thanks to Driver: San Francisco, Call of Juarez: The Cartel, Trackmania 2 and Settlers Online. A closed beta of Ghost Recon Online will also hit PCs in France, Germany and the US in the coming months.

Acquiring Owlient makes sense when you look at the company's online sales. XBLA titles Outland and Might & Magic: Clash of Heroes helped achieve sales of €12.5 million - a whopping increase of 45 per cent. Owlient has, according to a statement from Ubisoft, "developed an architecture dedicated to delivering and monetizing games as a service, as well as the expertise of attracting and retaining online communities."

So no prizes as to where the publisher is going to be placing a lot of bets in the future.