The latest installment in Ubisoft’s franchise, which has been running for almost two decades, has not achieved the stellar results that the French publisher had hoped for…

Ubisoft had high expectations for Assassin’s Creed Shadows, but unfortunately, even the long-awaited Japanese setting could not save the publisher from having to write off this game as a failure. Despite a strong start, Assassin’s Creed Shadows has achieved the lowest sales of the last five installments in the franchise. Initially, Assassin’s Creed Shadows reached 3 million players in one week. However, total sales six months after release were 4.3 million, which is not a very good result considering the time and budget invested in the game.

In three months, Assassin’s Creed Mirage sold 5 million copies, and despite being a spin-off release, it performed better than Assassin’s Creed Shadows. The previous RPG trilogy also performed reasonably well, with each title selling better than this year’s release. Although Ubisoft has not confirmed the budget for Assassin’s Creed Shadows, it has been reported to be over $116 million. Nowadays, even 10 million copies sold is considered an average benchmark for AAA games.

Following an underwhelming performance, Ubisoft and Tencent have formed a new subsidiary, Vantage Studios, which will manage the French publisher’s major IPs, including Assassin’s Creed. Perhaps the franchise will find success with this new partnership. As for Assassin’s Creed Shadows, Ubisoft is still trying to improve the game with post-launch content, and many new mechanics and missions are being added to the game. However, most of them seem like cut content, and if Ubisoft had spent more time on the game, things might have turned out differently.

It is also almost certain that the long-rumored but still unannounced Nintendo Switch 2 port will not improve the situation much.

Source: Tech4Gamers, Substack