(Bloomberg) -- Ubisoft Entertainment SA, the beleaguered French video-game company, hired advisers to weigh options, including a possible takeover, and announced another delay in its popular Assassin’s Creed franchise.
Bloomberg News reported in October that the founding Guillemot family and shareholder Tencent Holdings Ltd. were weighing whether to take Ubisoft private.
Ubisoft said it’s pushing Shadows back by a month to March 20. It was due to be released Feb. 14 — a delay from a planned November 2024 debut. The company has struggled to recover from a pandemic-era production crunch that resulted in delays for new games and canceled titles.
The extra time will allow the company to implement player feedback and “ensure an even more ambitious and engaging day-one experience” for the game, the company said.
Ubisoft said net bookings in the third fiscal quarter will drop to about €300 million ($309 million), reflecting lower than expected holiday sales for Star Wars Outlaws, as well as the discontinuation of XDefiant in December.
The company now expects its cost reductions to exceed the previously announced €200 million on an annualized basis.
The announcement was made after the close of trading Thursday in Paris. Ubisoft finished little changed at €12.33. The stock declined about 43% in 2024.
(Updates cost-cutting details in seventh paragraph.)
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