Given the dire situation, Ubisoft has found itself in, including plummeting stock prices, it’s hard not to imagine that there’s a lot riding on the success or failure of Assassin’s Creed: Shadows, the newest entry in the long-running franchise.
Well, it seems like its good news for Ubisoft, at least thus far. Despite the game being somewhat controversial, it has apparently drawn in over a million players in its first 24 hours on sale. Note that’s “players” rather than copies sold because Assassin’s Creed: Shadows is, of course, included on Ubisoft’s premium subscription service which rather muddies the stats a tad.
We don’t have much data about total players for past entries in the first 24 hours. We do know that Assassin’s Creed: Valhalla was revealed to have hit 1.8 million players in its first week. It was also announced to have sold more copies than any other entry in the franchise in that first week.
On Steam, Shadows appears to be doing decently, though hardly amazing. As I’m writing this the game has hit its highest concurrent player count (41,582) yet and looks like it will continue to rise. This does not account for all PC players since Shadows is also available via Ubisoft’s own PC storefront, as well as on the Epic Games Store.
Unfortunately, it’s hard to compare those Steam numbers to prior Assassin’s Creed games. The last Assassin’s Creed game to release day 1 on Steam was Assassin’s Creed: Mirage, managing just 7,870 concurrent players. However, Mirage was also a smaller project rather than a true mainline release.
Assassin’s Creed: Valhalla did not launch on Steam on day 1 as Ubisoft was skipping Steam at that point. It would come to Steam several years later, thus only getting 15,679 concurrent players. Assassin’s Creed: Odyssey, however, did launch on Steam alongside console and drew 62,069 concurrent players.
Player and critical reception seem to be good as well. Opencritic currently has it listed with an aggregated review score of 81 so far. On Steam, it’s holding a “Very Positive” rating with over 4,200 reviews.
Whether this level of success will be enough to help Ubisoft dig itself back out of its current problems remains to be seen, but at least people seem to be having fun with Assassin’s Creed: Shadows. I’m very tempted to pick it up, I have to admit.
