Ubisoft Delays Two Games, Including Avatar: Frontiers Of Pandora And A "Smaller Unannounced" Title

Ubisoft's new Avatar game, Frontiers of Pandora, will not launch on schedule. The company announced today as part of its earnings briefing that the game is now coming next fiscal year. Ubisoft delayed a second game as well.

Frontiers of Pandora is developed by Massive, the team that made The Division. This isn't the only game that Massive is working on, as it's also making an open-world Star Wars game.

"We are committed to delivering a cutting-edge immersive experience that takes full advantage of next-gen technology, as this amazing global entertainment brand represents a major multi-year opportunity for Ubisoft," the publisher said of the Avatar game delay.

While Frontiers of Pandora has shifted, James Cameron's new Avatar film, The Way of Water, comes to theaters this December.

Frontiers of Pandora is not the only game Ubisoft delayed, as it also confirmed that a "smaller unannounced premium" game has shifted to next fiscal year. The game is unannounced, so we don't know what it is.

Ubisoft's FY 2023-24 begins April 1, 2023 and ends June 30, 2024, so Frontiers of Pandora and the unannounced "smaller" premium game will be released sometime in that window. That is, of course, barring any further scheduling changes that could happen.

Ubisoft attributed the game delays to "ongoing constraints" across the video game industry.

"While this additional development time is a reflection of the current ongoing constraints on productions across the industry, we are hard at work to design the most efficient working conditions to ensure both flexibility for our teams as well as strong productivity while delivering the best experiences to players," Ubisoft said.

Also as part of Ubisoft's earnings briefing, several games were canceled (including Splinter Cell VR and Ghost Recon Frontline), and the company said Rainbow Six Siege performed "ahead of expectations" as the development team releases the game's seventh year of add-on content. The Assassin's Creed series also did better than expected thanks to a "strong" quarter for Odyssey, Origins, and Valhalla. "We saw a significant uptick in overall engagement, with double-digit active player growth versus last year as players were excited by the beginning of the campaign for the 15th Anniversary of the brand," Ubisoft said.

The publisher will reveal "the future of Assassin's Creed" during an event this September.

Finally, Ubisoft said one of its newest games, Roller Champions, is performing better in terms of player retention and revenue than Hyper Scape, also noting that fans are responding positively to the title.