A video game analyst claims that early sales and performance numbers for Assassin’s Creed Shadows indicate the game “is NOT the silver bullet Ubisoft needs.”
Ubisoft has touted the game noting it was played by over 2 million players within the first 48 hours.
More recently the company said it was “truly overwhelmed by the incredible support and enthusiasm we’ve received.”
On top of this, Ubisoft seemingly leaked data to various outlets including VGC indicating that the game “delivered the second-highest Day 1 sales revenue in the franchise’s history, behind only Valhalla.”
VGC also claimed that “Shadows marked Ubisoft’s best-ever Day 1 launch on the PlayStation digital store, was the most wish-listed Ubisoft title of all time, and generated over 11 million hours watched on Twitch — the strongest start for any recent Ubisoft title, including Valhalla.”
Furthermore, this data also seemingly downplayed the game’s Steam player counts with VGC reporting that “PC represented around 27% of total ‘activations’ – which likely encompasses full sales and subscription downloads via Ubisoft+ – with Steam playing ‘a significant role’ in that performance.”
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Despite all of this, Rhys Elliott, an analyst at MIDiA Research, who previously worked as a Games Market Analyst at Newzoo and also spent time at Nielsen, shared on LinkedIn, “Early numbers sadly do NOT reflect the smash hit Ubisoft really needs.”
He explained that Ubisoft’s announcement of 2 million players “is a BAD comp” and “it’s obfuscating things.”
He explained. “It doesn't take game sharing on PS5 into account (there's a system-level workaround that lets PS5 players share games digitally with a friend).”
“Ubisoft’s multi-game subscription (Ubisoft+) didn’t exist in 2018. For $18 a month, Ubisoft+ now lets subscribers play new Ubi games, including Assassin’s Creed Shadows, on PC and Xbox at launch,” he added.
Furthermore, he notes that Alinea Analytics predicts the game has only sold around 1 million copies total between Steam and PlayStation 5. Alinea claims that the game sold 711.7k copies through March 22nd on PlayStation and just 288.8k on Steam through March 22nd.
He also notes this does not include Xbox and Luna data.
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Nevertheless, he makes it clear the game “has almost certainly not broken-even yet” and observes that “Shadows’ performance on Valve’s store has been underwhelming so far.”
He also concludes, “I reckon it's challenging times ahead for Ubisoft.”
The claim that is has not broken even yet is an understatement given Assassin’s Creed Executive Producer Marc-Alexis Côté made it clear games like Shadows need to sell between 8 and 12 million just to break even.
He said, “When you look at who succeeds, at least in the AAA space-. So what I’m going to say applies to like mostly premium games, more traditional kind of AAA games. You have 10 games in any given year that will sell about 10 million copies.”
Côté then explained, “The reason I’m quoting the 10 million copies kind of mark is from what I’ve seen and how I’ve seen costs, our costs, and costs of competitors, and everybody—. Everything leaks in our industry so you have privileged information on where the competition is going. But mostly I estimate that 10 million copies give or take 2 million copies is mostly what you need to break even. But you have only 10 games that breach that every year.”
He then broke down what those 10 games look like, “Out of those 10, you’ll have probably three sports games. You’ll have four games on established franchises and probably 2 or 3 games that are surprise hits coming from nowhere. But that leaves very, very little room and wiggle room for success.”
“So I’m trying to steer the Assassin’s Creed franchise through that,” Côté added.
What do you make of Elliott’s analysis?
2 Million Players?
Doesn't Ubisoft have thier "Game Pass" included into Xbox Game Pass? So is that 2 Million SALES, or just downloads?
They are lying to you and giving you a "Half Truth", just like ALL Leftards do........
10 million sales sounds like a far cry from where they're at currently. 2 million players, as the article points out, does not equate to sales. Considering things will only drop off over time, this bodes ill for Ubisoft. They'll be lucky if they break even. VERY lucky.