After a delay and some brouhaha, Ubisoft’s H1 FY26 financial report finally took place earlier today, and turned out to be… a whole lot of nothing, really. Turns out that, rather than falling victim to an enormous monetary calamity or getting snapped up by Tencent, Ubi’s finances were delayed because the company appointed new auditors in July.
So that was a bit of a damp squib, but it doesn’t mean nothing of note came from the report itself. For instance, are you excited to hear that, per CEO Yves Guillemot, Ubisoft is “making great strides in applying gen-AI to high-value use cases that bring tangible benefits to our players and teams”?
No? How odd. After all, Guillemot points out that AI is “as big a revolution for our industry as the shift to 3D, and we have everything to lead on the front” which certainly has the tenor of something that should get us all very excited.
Guillemot and Ubisoft have been banging the AI drum for a while now. Last year, it unveiled its AI-powered “neo-NPCs,” promising that “each conversation between the player and an NPC” would be “unique and responsive to the players and their actions, leading to fully personalized and immersive experiences.”
So, you know, a lot of stuff you’ve heard before. Guillemot returns to that well in his remarks around the earnings report. “On the player experience side,” he says, “we are continuing to make progress on groundbreaking, player-facing, generative-AI applications, building on our ‘neo-NPC’ announcement in 2024. We’ve already advanced from prototyping to player reality, and we are looking forward to sharing more before the end of the year.”
(Image credit: Ubisoft)
That’s what you and I have to brace ourselves for. As for devs? “On the production side, we now have teams in all our studios and offices embracing these new technologies, and constantly exploring new use cases in programming, art, and overall game quality.”
Not since the entire corporate world began losing its mind (more than usual) over AI a few years ago have I ever personally believed the messianic language executives use about it, but comments like “as big a revolution for our industry as the shift to 3D” feel more baffling than ever, today.
To be excruciatingly fair, with over a trillion bucks sloshing about in AI investment globally, there are very few CEOs on the planet who could afford to stand in front of their investors and not vomit up a load of AI spiel in 2025; nothing Guillemot said is enormously out of step with what other tech bosses keep saying.
But the shine is coming off, isn’t it? Not a few days ago, Google’s Sundar Pichai copped to the fact there was a little “irrationality” in the AI goldrush, and the stock market’s been having a whale of a time as the moneymen get spooked by louder and louder talk of an AI bubble.
Will AI ever go away completely? Well, I wouldn’t bet on it, but I also don’t think the starry-eyed language of a new industrial revolution really plays anymore. I guess you can’t blame Guillemot; maybe this speech would’ve really hit if the report hadn’t been delayed by six days.
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