A publisher will NEVER, EVER blame poor sales on bad games. Especially when piracy is so easy to throw out there.
But let me be brutally honest here. Gamers (as a group, not individually) are sheep. They put up with crap from companies that general consumers (as a group, not individually) would never put up with.
"I don't own what I bought? No problem as long as the game is good." I have to constantly be online to play? No problem as long as the game is good?" Oh I have to pay for new maps and I can't create my own? No problem as long as the game is good." " Oh a new firmware eliminates a feature? I don't care, since I never used that feature anyway." We (as a group) are pretty pathetic. These companies know their customer demographic all too well.

No, it's not irrelevant if they want to assertain if their plan of getting people to choose new over used is working.
That additional information being the fluctuation in sales i mentioned. If the total # number of copies, new and used, didn't dropped or even increased and if the ratio shifted, it's 'good' for 'them'. However it doesn't tell us if the shift is due to their 'plan'.
And what am i, sold ? ;)
Let me ask you this, by reading the quote what do you think they mean by sucess ? Never mind if what they're trying to get across is truth or bullshit or that the provided data doesn't tells us much beyond the fact that they actually think it was a sucess or that they're trying to sell us it was a sucess.
Alias pointed out an apparent contradiction in the content of the quote and the 'sucess' conclusion, i didn't see it as a contradiction and explained why. That's it. I'm not trying to give credit to their claims, just to mine that there's a way to read the quote without it being a contradiction.
But this really isn't that important guys.

Agreed, it's damn likely.
Aliasalpha, I didn't meant that in the final stages of production they go there with a scissor and cut: this 20% here of the final product will be our DLCs. Of course not.
And today's BioWare isn't the same company of the old days, they aren't all that kind and all focusing on the passionate gamers they have in hands. They want money, too.
"current worldwide economic situation", "pc's piracy levels", blah blah. And IIRC, AC2 was one of the games that most dropped its price in a few months, rapidly, just after release. I hope Ubi learns the lesson and starts making quality games and not only superficial sequels, like the two recent Prince of Persia and AC2 and SC:Conviction.
Also, read these:
"Study: PC Software Sales Up 3% To .1 Billion In 2009"
"Square Enix Reports Record Profits"
Agree with all that you said.
Looks like Ubi will stick to these draconian strategies for some one, two years, let's see...
But they have their console users, who buys these half-developed games and think that they are awsum.
Yeah, and they really are taking advantage of this. Tthinking for the next years, separate companies but all together positioning to the same route.
This is just two giants first steps, and we (as a group of consumers) are really the sheep waiting for the others giants show up.

But they can't ever know, that's my point. Just because a smaller percentage of people bought a used copy, it's impossible to know whether the ones who didn't bought a new copy instead, or simply just didn't buy the game at all. If they just skipped that game altogether, then that is actually worse for the company (unless the game was truly bad, and would have lowered the would-be buyers' opinion of the company).
Correlation does not imply causation.

Ok, let me rephrase that. it's not irrelevant if they want to know the new/used ratio, even if the fluctuation of the ratio alone doesn't say anything about the faillure/sucess of whatever plan they have in place to shift the ratio. As for they can't ever know, i don't know, i guess that depends on the kind of data they have available to them.
If their goal is to shift the purchases, and it seems obvious it is, i assume they at least have the necessary data to give them some sorts of indication if wether or not it's working, even if that data doesn't come as a scientific, mathematical or statistical fact.
But this is all speculation and it wasn't my point to begin with.

In 20 years when EA is no more you'll be able to get it DRM free here at $6 so no worries :P

The funny thing is that actually going back and re-reading that quote it doesn't even present any information regarding that ratio of used/new games sales (looks like I lose at reading comprehension). Rather, it gives two different pieces of information. First, that 70% of the codes included with new copies were redeemed for the DLC (which can also be read as 30% of people who bought the game new didn't care enough about the free DLC to even take the time necessary to plug in the code and download it). And second, that the number of codes for the "free with new copy" DLC actually being bought were less than 5% of the total number of games sold. My own read on that would be that the "free with new copy" DLC received a pretty lukewarm reception, seeing as 30% of buyers couldn't even be bothered with it when it was free, and <5% of buyers were willing to actually pay for it.
As for the metric being used to claim success, the linked articles don't seem to actually include any information on that. However, I'd also expect it to be a cold day in hell when a CEO doesn't publicly claim a policy instituted under them was a smashing success, so I'd conjecture that the metric for success for such press releases is whatever metric allows the program to be claimed as a success.

I read on /v/ that Ubisoft gets get funded .by the Canadian government.
Is this true?

AFAIK it's not 'funding', but the Canadian government do give tax breaks to many game studios located there.

Yep. That's why publishers have some studios there, in Montreal for example.
There's Eidos Montreal which is doing Deus Ex 3, and Ubi Montreal which made Far Cry 2, A.C. series, Prince series...

Tax breaks. The gaming industry is being recognized for the big money employer that it has become, so a lot of countries are giving tax incentives for publishers/devs to set up shop within their borders.

In any case, Ubisoft has ended on my "shit list" which contains companies I have a very low regard for. So far, names like Apple, Trust, Strategy First, Steam, IMVU, etc. are on there.

One more adopting it, for $5:
"THQ latest publisher to use premium one-time code to encourage purchases of new games; buyers of used copies of MMA game will have to pay for access."

I do wonder how they'll implement the system though. Say you buy a game and the cd key is used. Can you simply get it reassigned to your account then? Because then anyone could just steal someone else's cdkey, pay $5 and end up with the full game and online capabilities.