Game developer Ubisoft slides amid muted reception for 'Star Wars Outlaws'
By Alban Kacher
Sept 3 (Reuters) -Shares in French video game maker Ubisoft UBIP.PA fell on Tuesday for a second consecutive day following a sluggish performance of its two recent releases, including the long-awaited "Star Wars Outlaws".
The shares, which closed 5.1% lower on Monday, were down 2.4% by 1114 GMT, trading at their lowest levels since 2015 and adding to their over 30% drop since the start of the year.
The decline was driven by a muted reception of Star Wars Outlaws, released on Friday, which follows lower than expected interest for the company's free-to-play game Xdefiant, said Midcap Partners analyst Charles-Louis Planade.
The Outlaws premiere was one of the two big major game releases Ubisoft had slated for this year, with Assasin's Creed Shadows scheduled for release on Nov. 15.
After four years of negative cash flows amid game cancellations and delays, the family-owned company has been betting on these releases to support its financial recovery.
Chief Financial Officer Frederick Duguet said in July that Ubisoft expected the launch of Outlaws to boost net bookings in the July-September quarter.
Despite an overall positive reception by critics, Star Wars Outlaws had a "generally unfavorable" users' score of 4.9 out of 10 on review aggregation website Metacritic as of Tuesday.
"Star Wars Outlaws has struggled to meet our sales expectations despite positive critical reviews," J.P.Morgan analyst Daniel Kerven said in a note.
The game's development budget was at least 30% higher than that of Assasin's Creed Mirage, released last year, while data from video game live-streaming platform Twitch suggested it was underperforming AC Mirage by about 15%, Kerven added.
Kerven also lowered his sales expectations for Outlaws by 2 million units, to 5.5 million units in the year through March 2025.
Planade added that after a strong initial interest for Xdefiant, a first-person shooter game launched in May, there has been a sharp decline in Twitch viewership, and the game would likely have a minimal impact on Ubisoft's results over the next few quarters.
Ubisoft did not respond to Reuters' request for comment on Tuesday. On Monday, it declined to comment on the games' performance.
Reporting by Alban Kacher in Gdansk; editing by Milla Nissi
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