From Gamasutra:

Despite the box office records of James Cameron’s recent CG-heavy film Avatar, Ubisoft Montreal’s corresponding video game failed to make much of an impact as either a critical or commercial success — not placing in the all-formats Top 20 for December 2009. […]

"We knew we were taking [some risk]," Guillemot said. "The fact that the movie was coming in December was a potential problem, and it did result in a problem." […]

"It will be difficult in the future to buy rights to a movie that comes in December, because it’s too risky, and it cannot [capture] Christmas season [sales]," the CEO added. "It doesn’t work as well for a video game company."

Still, CFO Alain Martinez was quick to point out that James Cameron’s Avatar: The Game can’t be seen as a genuine failure. "Avatar is not a loss-making project," he stressed. "When we lose 1 million sales [from our projections], that’s about 30 million euros in sales and 65 or 70 percent of gross margin that has been lost."

Read he full article at Gamasutra…

Related posts:

1. Ubisoft’s Guillemot Optimistic for Game Industry in 2009
2. Avatar: Executive Producer Interview (Ubisoft Montreal)
3. PSLS Interview: Avatar Lead Script Writer Kevin Shortt, Ubisoft Montreal
4. Review: James Cameron’s Avatar: The Game (from Ubisoft Montreal)
5. Cameron entertaining possibility of doing more games with Ubisoft

Tags: avatar, James Cameron, ubisoft montreal