Ubisoft Axed 7 Games for AC, Far Cry, Ghost Recon

"A disappointing short-term financial performance." That's how Ubisoft CEO Yves Guillemot described the publisher's last two years in the company's full 2025-2026 earnings report, posted May 20. Disappointing is doing a lot of heavy lifting. Ubisoft posted a record €1.3 billion operating loss for the fiscal year, saw net bookings drop 17 percent year-over-year, and watched its final quarter bookings crater 54 percent compared to the same period last year, when Assassin's Creed Shadows launched. The reward for all that pain? A promise that new Assassin's Creed, Far Cry, and Ghost Recon games will arrive sometime before March 2029.

The path to those games was paved with wreckage. Ubisoft confirmed it discontinued seven projects and delayed six others as part of its ongoing restructuring, a process that also shuttered studios including Ubisoft Halifax, Massive, and Ubisoft Stockholm, and cut roughly 1,200 employees over the past year. Among the casualties was the long-delayed Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time remake, a game that had been rebooted and re-announced so many times it became a punchline. Guillemot framed these cuts as necessary to "maximize long-term value" and deliver "a return to higher quality standards." I've heard similar language from publishers before, usually right before the next round of layoffs.

The three franchises Ubisoft is betting its future on are spread across its fiscal 2027-28 and 2028-29 windows, meaning none of them will show up before April 2027 at the earliest. The new Assassin's Creed is widely believed to be Codename Hexe, a game set in 16th century Europe during the witch trials. Originally announced in 2022, Hexe has already lost two directors during development. Far Cry hasn't had a new entry since Far Cry 6 in 2021, and Ubisoft previously confirmed it has two Far Cry projects in the works. Ghost Recon, meanwhile, hasn't seen a release since Breakpoint in 2019, and reports suggest the new entry will be a first-person shooter.

The gap before the cavalry

Ubisoft warned investors that the current fiscal year, running through March 2027, will be a "low point" in free cash flow thanks to a "lighter release slate" and ongoing restructuring costs. The company is leaning on its back catalogue, Rainbow Six Siege, and the recently unveiled Assassin's Creed: Black Flag Resynced to keep revenue flowing. It even pointed to For Honor, a game approaching its tenth anniversary, posting double-digit revenue growth last quarter as a bright spot. When a nearly decade-old title is your financial highlight, the cupboard is bare.

Ubisoft also doubled down on generative AI, saying it's "accelerating investments" behind Teammates, its AI-powered FPS experiment where players interact with generative AI squad mates. The company claims its developers are making "tangible progress" on AI applications for QA, NPC behaviour, and adaptive game worlds. The language is vague enough to mean almost anything, and I'd be surprised if we don't see AI tools woven into every major Ubisoft release over the next three years, for better or worse.

What strikes me about this earnings report is the sheer scale of the gamble. Ubisoft gutted its pipeline, shed over a thousand people, and closed multiple studios to concentrate everything on three franchise revivals that won't generate revenue for at least another year. If Hexe, Far Cry, and Ghost Recon all land above 80 on Metacritic and sell well, Guillemot looks like a visionary who made hard choices. If even one of them stumbles, Ubisoft will have burned through its safety net with nothing to show for it. The company cited Assassin's Creed Shadows, Anno 117: Pax Romana, and the Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora expansion as proof it can still hit quality benchmarks, all scoring above 80 on Metacritic. Three games clearing that bar is fine. Building an entire corporate turnaround on the assumption you'll keep doing it with franchises that haven't shipped in years is something else entirely.