During a conference call announcing estimates for its quarterly financial results, Ubisoft has announced that the next entry to the Driver series of action racing games, Driver: San Francisco, has been delayed until 2011, while simultaneously revealing sales numbers for a bevy of the publisher’s titles, including Splinter Cell: Conviction, Just Dance and Avatar.

Splinter Cell: Conviction, which released at the end of April, has managed to sell a worthy 1.9 million units during Ubisoft’s first fiscal quarter ending June 30th, Just Dance sold a healthy 800 000 units in the quarter (taking the life-to-date total to 3.7 million copies), while Avatar continued to draw in customers, selling 350 000 units.

Prince of Persia: The Forgotten Sands, which released in the middle of May, was said to have had a “soft” launch.

“Our sales performance this quarter reflects the success of several titles and attests to the quality of our game catalog,” said Ubisoft CEO Yves Guillemot. “It’s proof of Ubisoft’s ability to make its mark in an ever-demanding video games sector.”

As mentioned, Ubisoft’s next Driver title will only launch in the fourth quarter of Ubisoft’s financial year (January to March 2011), because of heavy competition in the holiday period this year. Driver was meant to release in November this year.

To create some holiday competition of its own, Ubisoft’s upcoming release of Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood is being met with great public anticipation, Guillemot says, as pre-orders in particular are higher than even Assassin’s Creed II:

“The preorders are the strongest ever seen, already 20 percent above those [for Assassin’s Creed II] from the same period last year,” said Guillemot, “even before the awards were announced following E3.”

In addition, the recently-announced Michael Jackson: The Experience dance game for Wii, Move and Kinect is expected to be a million seller, while future releases RUSE and HAWX 2 were also highlighted.

While final financial results are to be announced on July 22nd, Ubisoft has released sales estimates of €160 million ($201.45 million) for the last quarter, while forecasts for the current fiscal quarter put sales at €83 million ($104.50 million)

Source: Gamasutra