Ubisoft closed out 2011 right, hitting multiple milestones for not only its last month, but the entire year, based on recent announcements by market research group NPD.
Last year’s data reveals that Ubisoft was the only publisher with two games in NPD’s top ten list of best-selling games for the month of December. The latest installment of its popular motion-controlled music games, Just Dance 3, came in second (behind Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3) while Assassin’s Creed Revelations made seventh. Ubisoft was also named No. 1 third-party game publisher on Nintendo 3DS, No. 2 third-party game publisher for the month of December, and No. 3 third-party game publisher for its third consecutive calendar year.
Although merely placing second on NPD’s best-selling games of December 2011, Just Dance 3 proved to lend its first place-winning popularity to the company’s overall success. Thanks to the title, Ubisoft was found No. 1 third-party video game publisher on multiple hardware platforms including Kinect for Xbox 360 and Nintendo Wii, with the latter being Just Dance 3’s third month in a row at No.1. since its October release. Other titles from the franchise including Just Dance 2 and Just Dance Summer Party also assisted in earning the series’ title No. 1 Wii game for the past 14 of 15 months of NPD analysis.
“The Dance genre was the sixth largest of 2011, growing 66% versus 2010,” according to NPD analyst Anita Frazier. With this trend, Ubisoft can safely expect future releases to meet an equally successful reception this year, hopefully rejoined by Assassin’s Creed, whose Revelations title placed last on the list of top ten retail sellers in the U.S. for all of 2011.
