Good afternoon and good morning, everybody. Thank you for joining our conference call. As announced last week, we are implementing new changes to our organization. While they are having a negative impact on our short-term performance, we expect they will generate sufficient value over the coming years. Ubisoft has a history of making moves intended to spur its long-term prospects that have led to very significant value creation for its shareholders over the past five years. Ten years ago, we focused our strategy on our biggest franchises, and we put in place the lead and associate studio organization. Six years ago, we decided to increase the production time between the alpha and the release date for our games.
Those two decisions, and others like them, have led to a material transformation of our portfolio with the launch of successful new IPs like "The Division," "Watch Dogs," and "For Honor," with significant growth for franchises like "Rainbow Six" and "Far Cry," and a strong comeback for "Assassin's Creed" franchise. We delivered a huge increase in players' engagement over the past few years. Our numbers of session days for the first six months of this year is equal to the total number of session days for the full fiscal year 2014, 2015, and 2016 combined. These are all significant achievements and led to 100 million unique active players on PC and console last year. Looking at H1, after a better-than-expected Q1, our second quarter net bookings came in above our target, demonstrating the strength of our back catalog.
Our second quarter was only down 7% at constant exchange rates, despite no AAA release this H1 versus The Crew 2 release in June 2018. This speaks to the broad performance of our portfolio of franchises and notably, the great momentum of Rainbow Six Siege and Assassin's Creed Odyssey. Before turning the call over to Frédérick, I would like to come back to the comment we made last week regarding The Division 2's momentum versus our initial expectations. In absolute value, I want to underline that The Division 2 is delivering an overall solid performance. It was the biggest seller of the industry for the first six months of the calendar year, and it generated a solid financial contribution. As such, we are going to support the game with high-quality updates for the community as we are doing for our biggest titles.
I will now let Frédérick detail our H1 performance. Frédérick?
Thank you, Yves, and hello, everybody. Net bookings in H1 reached EUR 661 million, down 13% at constant exchange rates. Our Q2 net bookings reached EUR 347 million, down 7% at constant exchange rates, and 12% above our target of approximately EUR 310 million. As a reminder, the year-over-year decrease mostly reflects fewer early physical shipments for "Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon Breakpoint" versus "Assassin's Creed Odyssey" last year. Excluding that technical impact, Q2 is slightly growing versus last year. We delivered this better-than-anticipated quarter thanks to a solid and across-the-board back catalog performance, at 3% to EUR 238 million. This was spurred by a solid increase in overall play time and by a growing engagement per player, while MAUs were flat year-over-year. This more than offsets the high comparison base from "Far Cry 5" outstanding contribution in Q2 last year. Mobile and PC also contributed to this overperformance.
As we celebrate its one-year anniversary, we can confirm the continued momentum of Assassin's Creed Odyssey. Daily engagement, PRI, and sell-through continued to grow strongly over the quarter, ahead of Assassin's Creed Origins last year. All of these metrics even accelerated during the quarter after an already very strong Q1. Rainbow Six Siege's MAUs has reached a new record this quarter. A consequence, PRI grew again year-over-year. The game passed the 50 million registered players mark in September, and its solid momentum over the quarter was spurred by the July event, Showdown, and the new season, Operation Ember Rise, in September. On the esports scene, the Six Major Raleigh organized in August, saw a meaningful engagement progression with a 27% increase in watch time compared to the Six Major Paris 2018 edition.
Finally, the current Halloween event is seeing the strongest revenue per session ratio since the Outbreak expansion in March 2018, and a robust year-on-year engagement progression. We recently introduced a mini-battle pass, We'll launch the full version during an upcoming season. Concerning The Division 2, in October, we released Episode 2, Pentagon: The Last Castle. With this second major update, we brought extensive changes and delivered a host of improvements fueled by community feedback. Episode 2 generated the highest reactivation rate since the launch of The Division 2. The improvements to accessibility and the overall health of the game resulted in the most successful conversion rate for a free weekend on The Division 2. As you mentioned, the game was the biggest seller of the calendar year until the end of June. We are already hard at work improving the Ghost Recon Breakpoint experience for our community of players.
Our first priority is to improve the technical state of the game with the release of several title updates in the coming weeks. In parallel, we are also working to make the experience for players more comfortable. We are dedicated to supporting the game in the long term to keep the world constantly growing and evolving. Among our other titles, Brawlhalla, our free-to-play game, now supports cross-platform play between PS4, Xbox One, PC, and Switch. The game continues to enjoy great momentum with very strong year-on-year growth. In H1, total digital net bookings reached EUR 537 million, up 4%, and PRI was up 18% to EUR 310 million. On a platform basis, PC up 18% in H1, continues to enjoy a strong momentum. As a reminder, we launched our Uplay platform 10 years ago, and this long-term investment is now paying off handsomely.
Following a great performance in fiscal 2019, revenues on Uplay grew very strongly again in H1. Additionally, we launched our new subscription platform, Uplay+ on PC in September, which aims at leveraging our diversified portfolio of own IPs. Like with other subscription services, the early data is showing that subscribers are more engaged than non-subscribers. This is just the beginning, and as you know, we did not factor any contribution from Uplay+ in our assumptions for the fiscal year. Looking at our mobile business, net bookings were up 6% in H1 and 33% in Q2. Q2 growth is due to the releases of Mighty Quest for Epic Loot and Rayman Mini, and to the acquisition of Green Panda Games. The quarter saw strong performance from the hyper-casual segment, with four of our games in the top 10 iOS download rankings in the U.S. this summer.
Regarding earnings, we implemented for the first time IFRS 16 in H1. The objective of IFRS 16 is to homogenize the accounting presentation between companies buying and those leasing their assets, and to standardize the accounting treatment of all types of lease. At the balance sheet level, this implies, first, the accounting of right of use of the assets amortized over the duration of the contract for a net amount of EUR 206 million. Second, the accounting of a lease obligation liability corresponding to the sum of discounted future cash flows for EUR 217 million. At the P&L level, impacts are as follows and are marginal this semester. Cancellation of the rental expense and recognition of an amortization expense of the right of use. Recognition of interest expenses on financial debt, the accounting of tax, if applicable.
Finally, IFRS 16 has a meaningful impact of EUR 217 million on the net cash position. Therefore, we have introduced a new metric, which is a non-IFRS net cash position, adjusted from IFRS 16 impacts in line with our historic net cash calculation. Let me now go into the details of our H1 earnings, which mostly reflect the momentum of our back catalog, compensated by the unfavorable comparisons of Ghost Recon Breakpoint versus Assassin's Creed Odyssey and The Division 2 versus Far Cry 5, the release of The Crew 2 last year, and one-off elements. As you can see in slide five of our presentation, our gross margins stood at 85.4%, a 0.3-point increase versus last year. The positive mechanical impact from the digital progression was primarily offset by one-off elements related to higher hosting costs. R&D was up 6.6 points, and I will review it in the following slide.
Regarding SG&A, marketing was impacted by a bigger campaign for Ghost Recon Breakpoint versus Assassin's Creed Odyssey. Our fixed structure costs were up 5.1 points, with the biggest increase factor being the last December acquisition of i3D.net, followed by our investment in our e-commerce platform, data and security. Turning now to slide six. Despite no AAA release in the quarter, R&D P&L was up 5% due to the significant impairment charges we recorded on Breakpoint. Our total cash R&D was up 12%, reflecting our stated goal to fuel our long-term growth and value creation. More specifically, the 24% increase in non-capitalized R&D reflects our investment in post-launch content to drive strong PRI growth for H1 and for the coming year. It also reflects a one-time accounting event as last year Rainbow Six Siege post-launch was capitalized, and it is now fully expensed. Regarding the reconciliation table, slide seven.
IFRS sales are impacted by a positive EUR 36 million that was deferred from the prior year. Stock-based compensation was slightly down versus last year. As usual, our non-IFRS figures also exclude a EUR 4 million non-cash charge related to the convertible bond option cost. Looking at our cash flow statement in slide eight, there are different elements to highlight. First, the EUR 193 million decrease in cash flow from operation is mostly due to the non-IFRS net income decrease of EUR 146 million, combined with the EUR 33 million increase in the gap between R&D P&L and cash.
This is partially offset by an EUR 84 million decrease in working capital requirement that is mostly related to fewer early physical shipments on Breakpoint versus Odyssey last year, and inventory variance from prior year related to the launch of Starlink. We had EUR 33 million in acquisition related to the acquisition of Green Panda Games end of July, and deferred payment of past acquisitions. Finally, we had EUR 77 million proceeds from issue of capital and EUR 35 million disposal of our own shares to fund our latest employee share plan, which had a positive impact of EUR 112 million. All in all, this translated into a non-IFRS net debt of EUR 218 million that compares with EUR 337 million a year ago. Talking about net debt, I would like to highlight we benefit from a solid financial position.
As you can see in slide nine, even if we factor in the fact we expect negative cash flow from operations over the second semester, we expect a significant improvement in our net financial situation by year-end. Additionally, with EUR 1.3 billion in committed available funding and no maturity debt within the next three years, excluding EUR 50 million in [True Shine], combined with a total equity of comfortably north of EUR 1 billion by fiscal year-end, we benefit from a very strong financial situation that will allow us to finance further growth development, contemplate potential M&A, and opportunistic buybacks. Looking at Q3, we expect net booking at around EUR 410 million, down 32% versus last year. This mostly reflects a lower Ghost Recon Breakpoint relative to Assassin's Creed Odyssey, as well as, to a lesser extent, the launch of Starlink last year.
As for the full year 2020, as we announced last week, we now target net bookings of approximately EUR 1 billion, EUR 450 million, and we expect non-IFRS operating income to end up between EUR 20 million and EUR 50 million. In line of these new targets, we are now expecting digital PRI and back catalog to grow meaningfully as a % of net bookings versus last year. Regarding the items below the non-IFRS operating income line, please note that the number of diluted shares is now expected around 122 million. Last week, we also introduced our first targets for fiscal 2021 with net bookings and non-IFRS operating income of approximately EUR 2 billion, EUR 600 million, and EUR 600 million respectively.
With the additional time provided to our three titles, and the fact that our other two AAAs come from our biggest franchises, we believe we have a strong visibility on next year's lineup, and we also plan to continue to grow PRI, Asia, and PC. For the years beyond fiscal 2021, we continue to expect releasing three to four AAAs per year to benefit from a growing catalog and PRI, and from our Tencent partnerships on mobile, and on the ongoing momentum in Asia and PC. I now hand over the call back to Yves.
Thank you, Frédérick. We are confident in the medium and long-term prospect for Ubisoft. The ongoing trend of popular IP successfully transitioning to mobile like "Fortnite" and "Call of Duty" proves our strategy of bringing our franchises on mobile is the right one. It can generate significant value. The new generation of consoles will bring heightened excitement from gamers, and our PC momentum will continue to bear fruit. Asia is also a significant source of opportunity for Ubisoft, and we will leverage our strong and diversified portfolio of IP through the multiplication of platforms and new play. Finally, while the decision we made last week is impacting our short-term performance, history shows that those kinds of moves are always very positive to our long-term development. We expect financial year 2021 and financial year 2022 to demonstrate the first benefits of that decision. We are now ready to answer your questions.
Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, if you would like to ask a question, please signal by pressing star one on your telephone keypad. If you're using a speakerphone, please make sure your mute function is turned off to allow your signal to reach our equipment. Again, ladies and gentlemen, as a reminder, please press star followed by one. We will pause for a quick moment just to allow everyone an opportunity to signal for questions. We will now take our first question from Nicolas Langlet of Exane BNP. Please go ahead. Your line is open.
Hello. Good afternoon, everyone. I've got three question, please. The first one on "Rainbow Six." You mentioned a good PRI growth in Q2, that the competition is likely to become a bit tougher in the coming months, notably with "Call of Duty: Modern Warfare." Do you think your own initiative can offset that increased competition and allow "Rainbow Six" PRI to continue growing in H2? Is it what you included in your guidance? Second question on the full year 2021 net booking. You didn't comment on the split between back catalog and new game last week. Hopefully, you can give us a bit more color, at least a rough split between the two. Third question on the non-IFRS net debt.
If we take into account the recent issuance of the new convertible bond and your expected free cash flow, what rough level of non-IFRS net cash position you expect for the full year? Thanks.
On the first point, Nicolas, we had indeed a very strong Q2 on Rainbow Six on the PRI side. As we said, we reached a record MAU number over the quarter. It was even bigger than during the quarter when we launched the Outbreak expansion. We see that engagement grew at a double-digit growth rate in Q2. As a consequence, PRI grew nicely. What we've seen recently is that with the Halloween event, it grew materially again, engagement, while it was in front of strong competition. That confirms that we are coming with a high number and of higher quality of events, and we come with a high pace of content delivery.
It's doing very well for Rainbow. We're also happy to come with the battle pass that will be a strong retention tool in the future. We believe Rainbow is coming well in terms of PRI growth, and yes, we assume that PRI will grow in the second semester. For fiscal 2021, it's too early to provide any detail on this metric. What we said is that we have very strong visibility on our new releases that we reviewed thoroughly, and we believe that they will be coming along very well. That's the reason why we believe that fiscal 2021 will be a great year.
On your question, taking into account that we'll have the impact of the new convertible bond and the conversion of the previous one, and assuming that we have negative cash flow from operation in the second semester, we expect that our net cash position will strongly improve versus our net position at end of September in non-IFRS terms. Okay.
Okay. Thank you.
You're welcome. Apologies. We will now move on to our next question from Michael Ng of Goldman Sachs. Please go ahead. Your line is open.
Great. Thank you so much for the question. Maybe I just have two. The first is, could you just talk a little bit about the PRI strength in Rainbow Six Siege? How should we think about the cadence of that PRI in the second half, and are there any specific events or live services update that you would highlight? Then as a follow-up to that, do you think the success of Rainbow Six Siege has made it more difficult for other Tom Clancy games, like The Division or Breakpoint to succeed? Just as a housekeeping question, could you just tell us how much the impairment charge was for Breakpoint? Thanks.
First, on the competition Rainbow Six could have on the other products. We don't think that it has a major impact as it is a PVP game where the other games are more solo and co-ops. Frédérick, maybe you can answer the other question.
Yes. On the PRI strengths on Rainbow Six Siege, I think I already answered the question previously. Again, we've been happy to see that we are increasing with a stronger cadence in terms of content delivery. What we see is that, the fact that we're coming more often drives more sessions per player per month, and that's the key point. We also believe that our PRI improvement potential is strong on Rainbow. The fact that we're coming with a battle pass will be very positive for the future.
In terms of impairment charges for Ghost Recon Breakpoint, it's meaningful, but we don't give the exact amount on this. You have to consider as well that Assassin's Creed Odyssey PRI is also very good. Yeah, we've been very happy-
Great. Thank you.
With the strong acceleration again in Q2.
Great. Thank you very much.
Thank you.
We will now take our next question from Robert Berg of Berenberg. Please go ahead. Your line is open.
Yeah. Thanks, guys. A couple of questions left from me. The first, I'm slightly confused by the message on The Division 2. Last week you pointed to it being a disappointment and a reason behind the downgrade this year. Today, you're saying it's setting reactivation records and you're keen to say how well it's doing. I just want you to try and summarize everything together and what is the message we should be taking away for this game. The second question on the convertible. Again, I'm keen to hear why you decided to issue another convertible. Did you consider other sources of finance, and why did you come to the conclusion that the convertible was the most appealing? Thanks.
On The Division 2, what we wanted to say is that, even if we were disappointed by the expectations we had on the game, it was still a good seller, and it was meaningfully profitable. It didn't do what we expected, but it's still a very good game. That's what we wanted to say. Yeah, Robert, on the convertible. Yes, we carefully examine different alternatives, especially the alternative between convertible bond and non-rated bonds possibility. What was very clear after our in-depth analysis was that the market conditions were exceptional in the convertible bond side with a very strong imbalance between our firm demand, and that led us to the conclusion in a very clear manner that we will benefit from exceptional market conditions with no risk of execution and actually with a high probability of very high quality in the execution. And that's exactly what happens.
We're able to optimize the terms to exceptional levels, up to 65% premiums and a negative 1% yield over five years. That's been pretty exceptional in terms of market terms. That's why we wanted to seize this opportunity to provide a company with the right long-term flexibility to fuel our growth, in terms of development internally, but also with a focus, potentially, if M&A opportunities arise.
Thanks. Just a very quick follow-up. Do we assume that everybody in the previous convertible converted? Is that the base for what we should be assuming?
Yeah. The 99.4% converted on the previous one.
Thank you.
You're welcome.
We will now take our next question from Ken Rumph of Jefferies. Please go ahead. Your line is now open.
Hello, gentlemen. Could I ask something about your thought process in delaying the games, and what differently you would do going forwards? In terms of the thought process, you had a choice, I guess, of delaying one, two, three games. It seems to me you could well have decided that you'll say, "Gods & Monsters is very different. It's nothing to do with Ghost Recon. We could go ahead with this." There it seems to me perhaps you thought this year is financially kind of severely impacted, let's push everything. A little bit about your thought process about why all three, why not just a couple? Related to that, what kind of inefficiency cost do you bear this year? Effectively, you have a staff and a marketing department that's designed for three or four games. Those guys are all still working.
Okay, you don't have to buy as much media capacity as you would have done if you'd had those launches, but there are fixed costs that are kind of underutilized, that would have been utilized if you'd launched a game as planned in the first quarter. How much, if you like, does that weigh on the second half of the year? Finally, regarding the extra time that you're giving yourself. Part of the problem appears to be that although you scrutinized Ghost Recon and tested it and surveyed it in advance, and it seemed like it would be okay, it didn't turn out that way. What different do you do going forwards with the three games? Do we have an earlier beta?
You tell me, what can you do aside from spending more time and polishing harder to kind of ensure those games have what players demand and avoid the mistakes or the disappointments of Ghost Recon? Thank you.
Thank you for your questions. What you have to consider for the marketing team that we have is that as we are doing lots of events on our live games, they will have plenty of work to do on all those events. For sure, not having games will cost, but it means we will spend a lot more time on all those events and live events that we will have on our games. Now, on the other question about how do we do it differently than on Ghost Recon on the next releases. Having more time is going to give us a chance to do more testing, get more feedback from players. This is the way we have been doing in the past. More time is going to help us to have a better understanding of all the changes we can make.
As those games are going to be playable for a long time, we are going to get those info and make the modifications that can be needed.
So if I understand-
What is important.
In a way, if you had a beta and then several months to respond to it, there's more you can do.
In fact, we are also changing our organization to check all the problems that we had last time with Ghost Recon. This organization is also going to check all the different points that we want to check.
Okay. Thank you.
Ken, what is important to consider is that, like we said last week, we're working on two major elements. First of all, making sure that each breakthrough, new formula, change in formula, new brand, are coming with a very highly optimized experience. That's our key goal that we're stating very loud and clear, and that's why we believe that these three games that are coming with a very strong promise and a strong element of differentiation will be very well delivered. Also, in general, what we said is that we'll spend more time and have an additional pillar in our quality approach into building differentiation elements to improve the marketability of our games. We've been improving gameplay in a very meaningful manner over the years. We have optimized live operation services.
We are adding a new pillar to make sure that all of our games will stand out and will be able to come with very stronger elements of identity. We believe that's going to be a key step change in going for a higher marketability and grow our audience to a higher level.
Thank you.
You're welcome.
We will now move on to our next question from Mr. Ray Stata, Consumer Edge Research. Please go ahead. Your line is now open.
Great. Thanks for taking my question. Can you discuss the introduction of the battle pass into Rainbow Six? Is this an additive monetization strategy, or is it more focused on retention? Why do you think we're seeing so many battle passes in the market from your competitors?
First of all, we've seen a very smooth implementation of the mini battle pass that we implemented ahead of the Halloween event. The feedback from players were good. Of course, it's too early to isolate the impact that we've had on strong engagement growth and PRI growth from the event to isolate the impact of the mini battle pass from the event itself. We see it as a strong retention tool. We know that when we come with a highly optimized and very pleasant player experience, and we come with stronger elements and tools of retention, then naturally, PRI grows to a high level.
Got it. Are you learning more post Ghost Recon with this implementation of the battle pass in Rainbow Six? Are you learning more about the best monetization strategy approach for each of the titles that you have coming next year? Was there any worry about launching the titles with a poor monetization strategy, and now you have extra time to fix that post-launch monetization strategy with that extra six to nine months plus with those titles that you pushed into the next year?
We are learning from all the experiences we have. We are going to make sure monetization is well implemented and that continues to follow our goal, which is always to make sure that players can play 100% of the experience without having to buy in-game. Really, what we do is really make sure that people have a good experience in the game, and that when they spend lots of time in the game, they can be interested in buying items in games, not the contrary.
Got it. Thanks so much.
Thank you.
We will now take our next question from Matthew Walker of Credit Suisse. Please go ahead. Your line is open.
Thanks a lot. I've just got two questions, please. First one is, can you just tell us a little bit more about what happened on Ghost Recon? You go through these checks and these gating procedures. Can you just explain who does the final checks? How come it wasn't spotted that the micro-transactions were not going down very well? Is it the studio that produces the game that does all these checks, so they're sort of marking their own homework, as it were? Is it somebody from outside that studio who makes the game that does the necessary checks to make sure it's going to be successful, and explain how those checks are going to be done differently in the future. Second question is, you saw EA pushed out Battlefield into fiscal 2022. Their argument was around the low install base for the new consoles.
They need time to get it to a higher level. You're going to be releasing your titles, I guess, earlier. What's your thinking around the timing of releases, and how many releases are going to come in the fiscal Q4 of 2021? Thank you.
I will answer the first question. Maybe Frederic is going to answer the second one. Sorry. I will answer the second question and Frederic, the first one. We consider that the coming of the new consoles is actually to boost the market quite a lot, as what happens with those new consoles is that Sony and Microsoft are generally coming with good volume for those new machines. It's going to be lots of marketing and lots of new machines there that will increase the market potential. What is important is when you come early on the next generation of console, you can sell also your game for a long time. We are very happy to be close to the launch of those consoles because it's going to benefit all the games we will launch. It doesn't mean that we will not be happy.
We will be also happy to have games coming in 2022 that will have more console installs. Here, the new console arrival is going to help tremendously.
Keeping in mind that at the time of the last transition, we had launched Assassin's Creed Black Flag, which has been one of the biggest game ever for Ubisoft. It worked very well at the time of the generation transition.
You have both, actually. You have the old-gen and new-gen at the same time. It's really helping a lot.
On your first question, let's be clear and step back. The primary point on Ghost Recon has been that the new formula has been rejected by an important fraction of the players. Of course, we could have improved the final execution on the micro-transaction point. The key point and what we know and what we've learned is that the primary element is to come with a formula that the players will love and that the player experience needs to be great. PRI comes along naturally. The responsibility is, of course, shared by the studio and the central teams. In the past, we've had a number of very great experiences in the way we implemented PRI across all our games. We coming back with the decision we've just made.
We've coming back to the point that we need to come with a very well-optimized player experience. That comes from that.
Okay, thanks a lot.
You're welcome. Thank you.
We will now move on to our next question from Thomas Singlehurst of Citi. Please go ahead. Your line is open.
Good evening. It's Tom here from Citigroup. One question that I suppose I should probably have asked this last week, because it's not really a 1H related call, but just, as I say, with a couple more days to think about it, just wondering, with respect to the performance of Ghost Recon and the development so far, whether you think there's anything, I suppose, more structural about the sort of open sandbox type of game. Well, it just struck me that some of the games that people are really excited about have very strong sort of stories and narratives associated with them.
I just would be interested in your perspectives on whether the sort of, as I say, the sort of open world sandbox-type games are just falling slightly out of vogue, whether that's one of the takeaways from Ghost Recon and to a lesser extent, the performance of Division 2. Thank you.
Yeah. When we look at the past, our open worlds setting have been loved by many players. That's been the case for Ghost Recon as well.
Ghost Recon Wildlands.
Ghost Recon Wildlands. That's proven to be a very great competitive advantage for Ubisoft in the long run.
What we know is that we have to come with a compelling story and marketability of the places you go, which is also more appealing than what we had. That's what we see now, is that it's very important to make sure the story and that even if it's in an open world, it's really well-worked and that the characters are stronger.
Keeping in mind that we had stage change the audience of Ghost Recon by coming into an open world.
Got it. Is that something that's on the agenda with these delays? Just a little bit more emphasis on the story and the characterization and
That's the kind of gates we are putting to make sure we work harder on the characters, on the settings, and making sure we test that a lot more than what we did before.
The key element of differentiation and identity are very much around the sense of purpose we're building, the sense of antagonism, along together with the element that you mentioned around character and narratives. Of course, it will depend on each and every game genre.
On the gameplay side, we made a lot of progress and the experience in Ghost Recon is a fantastic experience. The second step is to make sure that we work harder on the other elements.
Got it. Thank you very much.
You're welcome.
We will now move on to our next question from Charles Scotti of Kepler. Please go ahead. Your line is now open.
Yes, good evening. I've got three questions, please. The first one is on Rainbow Six Siege. Why the approval process in China is taking so long in your view? Is there any blocking point? The second question, I'm just curious to hear your thought on the success of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare. Last week you kind of suggested that the yearly sequel-based business model was clearly questioned. It seems that the success means that it's still relevant. My third question, last week you talked about that your five triple A games would be compatible on both consoles generation. Does that mean that if a gamer buy a game on PS4, he will be able to play it on PS5 while benefiting from the great graphics, or are we just talking about the backward compatibility? Thank you.
Yes. On Rainbow Six, in China, it follows the normal process, and it's well on the way. It takes time, but we feel we can't say much more, but it's well on the way. That's the only thing we can say.
Yeah. On the comment we made last week in terms of space between releases, it was very much around the multiplayer live co-op type of game. That are different genres than what you mentioned for Call of Duty.
Which is a PVP.
Which is a PVP.
Yes. On the five titles, yes, they will be compatible. They will be on this generation and next generation of consoles, and they will take full advantage of all the new features that are actually coming with the machines, which are going to be extremely interesting for players, as you will be able to download a lot faster new content. The players will experience a better frame rate. There are lots of very good elements that will come with those new machines. Thank you.
Thank you.
We will now move on to our next question from Michael Ng of Goldman Sachs. Please go ahead. Your line is open.
Hi. Thank you very much for the follow-up. I just had a few housekeeping questions. Could you just clarify, Frédérick, when you said growth in the second semester of fiscal 2020 for PRI, was that sequentially versus the first half or year-over-year? Could you just clarify what the outlook for PRI is for the full year? Could you just talk a little bit about Green Panda? How much did it contribute in the quarter, and what's the run rate? Thank you.
Yeah. On PRI, my comment on the growth was for Rainbow Six Siege relative to last year, where I don't think I made any comment on the overall PRI globally. What we said is that we expect PRI as a % of net booking, of course, to be significantly higher than last year.
Green Panda.
Yeah. On Green Panda, it's been a meaningful contribution relative to the mobile overperformance.
Still small.
It's still relatively small.
Okay. Thank you.
Thank you.
We will now take our next question from Benji Skulock of Arete Research. Please go ahead. Your line is open.
Hi. Thanks for taking my question. It's just on cross-play. I was wondering if you can comment on whether you've seen any increase in engagement in Brawlhalla after introducing cross-play feature, and whether you have any plans to implement the feature across your larger franchises and what you think it could do for engagement. Thanks.
Yes, our goal is to put cross-play on all the PVP games that we have over time. That's really well on the way.
On Brawlhalla, it's still early to draw any conclusion. We believe it will contribute to continue increasing engagement, but it's too early to draw final conclusion. We've been very happy with a very strong growth of Brawlhalla again in Q2.
That's all we can say at this stage.
Okay, thanks.
Thank you.
We will now move on to our final question from Ken Rumph of Jefferies. Please go ahead. Your line is open.
Hi. Thanks for a follow-up, gentlemen. Thinking about cadence and your rolling three-year plan. We don't know the details, but we know you were planning four games for the current year, presumably three or four for next year, three or four for the year after. You've therefore pushed three games into next year, turned it into a five-game year, shunted Skull and Bones into the year after. There seems therefore a possibility that the numbers go one game, five games, three games. Raises the question that was raised earlier about aren't you overloading 2021 and running the risk of a disappointment in nine months time when you might reasonably say we want to make sure that all these games go well, so maybe it's only four after all and four the year after?
Perhaps just a little bit about sort of the cadence and sort of capacity to launch many games in one year. Thank you.
Yeah. First, what is important to consider is that as those games were to be finished in Q4, what we are going to put in the three games that you will have next year is improvements, a lot of polish, and a lot of testing. The amount of work will be less important than what we do on a full new game.
That's one element. Frédérick.
Yeah. On the two biggest franchises, we have a strong visibility. We've reviewed them thoroughly, it's coming along well.
Okay. Thank you very much.
You're welcome.
You're welcome.
It appears there are no further questions at this time. I'd like to turn the conference back to you for any additional or closing remarks.
Thank you for all your question today, and have a good evening or a good day.