Ubisoft’s Star Wars Outlaws failed to have 1,000 concurrent players playing the game in its debut on Steam.
In its first day on Steam, Star Wars Outlaws only hit a peak of 834 concurrent players.
Making matters even worse, Ubisoft discounted the game 25% for all editions. So instead of spending $69.99 for the base edition it only cost $52.49. Similarly, the Gold Edition only cost $82.49 instead of $109.99 and the Ultimate Edition only cost $97.49 instead of $129.99.
READ: 'Assassin's Creed' Executive Producer Reveals AAA Games Need To Sell 10 Million Copies To Break Even
To show just how terrible this game performed on its first day, one need only look at Sony’s most recent release Concord, which was shut down less than two weeks after release.
It only hit an all-time peak of just 697 players.
It also performed worse than Respawn’s Star Wars Jedi: Survivor, which released on Steam at the end of April 2023.
The game had a 24-hour peak of 1,481. Star Wars Outlaws performed 43.6% worse than Jedi: Survivor.
READ: Ubisoft Discounts 'Star Wars Outlaws' By $20 Ahead Of Release To Steam
For another comparison, you can look at Star Wars: The Old Republic. It had a 24-hour peak of 4,868.
Star Wars Outlaws’ peak concurrent player counts are 82.8% worse than The Old Republic.
It is abundantly clear that this game will not be a long-term seller despite Ubisoft’s hopes.
Ubisoft CEO Yves Guillemot shared that hope during a recent conference call while answering a question about the game’s sales curve.
He was asked by a BMO investor, “On Star Wars Outlaws, obviously, off to a slower start than you guys wanted, can you provide a little color into the sales curve there more recently? Have you guys started to see things pick up? Can you talk about any discounting you might be doing or strategies for discounting into the holiday period would be helpful?”
Guillemot responded, “On Outlaws what we can say is that the three title updates that we’ve delivered at the same time we’ve been observing substantial positive community sentiment improvement. The biggest update is still to come by November 21st. And it will come on the same day as the first big story pack and the launch for Steam. So we are putting ourselves in a position to have a must-play game that should address a mainstream audience for the busy season. Also to be a long-term seller.”
He continued, “It has great quality and the team wanted to make sure that we will remove a few frictions. And then implement some gameplay mechanics that will certainly delight the players.”
Ahead of the games release investors were expecting the game to sell at least 5 million units. Barclays’ Nick Dempsey asked during Ubisoft’s Q1 FY2024 Sales Report in May, “When I look at the guidance for Q2 and if I assume something similar for back catalog in Q2 as Q1 kind of getting to €200 to €230 million, that sort of range. For the new release Star Wars Outlaws, when I look at the $70 price and then assuming what you might get from it, I’m getting to around 5 million units, something in that sort of bracket. First of all, where could I be going wrong with that thinking? Secondly, are you just being pretty conservative in your guidance because I guess given the interest in that game we might have thought it would be more than 5 million units?”
It is rumored the game only sold 1 million units in its first month with Insider Gaming reporting, “We have secured a current sales figure from sources close to the game. At the time of writing, Star Wars Outlaws has just ticked over one million sales worldwide.”
Further rubbing salt in this wound is Assassin’s Creed Executive Producer Marc-Alexis Côté recently revealing that AAA games need to sell somewhere between 8-12 million units to break even.
He divulged that information during an interview at XDS24. 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.”
He 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.”
It seems apparent that Star Wars Outlaws is a massive disaster for Ubisoft as well as Lucasfilm Games.
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