Ubisoft isn't in the position they are because of one game, I think it's incredibly unlikely their fortunes would be completely reversed because of one game.
UBIsoft in potential financial trouble
- Thread starter Silent_Buddha
- Start date
Well, your words really say otherwise:
If you're talking about company fortunes and Shadow's impact, surely the consideration is profits, not sales? Shadow selling 20 million units would be undeniably great sales, but if it lost them money in the long run, bad for business and then visible as, at some point, a downturn in stock value. AFAICS so far the discussion has been about the amount of units sold, echoing the Steam numbers consideration, on Shadow's market performance. Insight into revenue and costs surely won't come until Ubi's next financial report, pending press releasees?
If they didn’t sell enough to recoup the cost to make it I would say those are bad sales. What is ‘good sales’ for one game is ‘bad sales’ for another, as AAA(A) games cost way more to make than random indie games where selling 20 million is incredible.
What language do you use to differentiate between units shifted and money made then? The standards are, surely, 'sales' for units, 'revenue' for money, and 'profit' for net gains? Look up a list of best selling anything and you'll get the number of items sold, not the amount of money made.
Huh? You referenced shadows which just launched. The 40% is over a year.
“Units shifted” is a useless metric. An indie game that cost $20k to make selling 400k is great, CoD selling 400k is horrible.
A company losing almost half its market cap over the course of 12 months is nuts.
In the past month they are down 10%, which is also not a gyration, that is a significant decrease, despite a major launch.
The entire US market is down 6% in the same month. If we narrow it down to tech stocks, such as Vanguard's information Technology Index Fund ETF (ARCX: VGT) we see the whole index is down 11% in the the same timeframe. IF you don't like VGT as an indicator, pick your own relevant tech stock index and tell us how it performed in the last month.
Yet again, context matters.
You've still yet to provide any data which indicates their stock drop is related to sales (or lack thereof) of their newest iteration of the AC franchise. Do you actually have any data to support your stance?
Ubisoft is not an American company so idk what US ETFs have to do with it. VXUS (the international whole market index) is only down 1%.
No I don’t have any data, I’ve gone over my reasoning for why I think they’re linked but ultimately it’s speculation. I’m not sure what data you expect me to have here.
You’re ignoring obvious macro factors. Yes 10% down is bad. The biggest Euro index is down 5% in the same month. What’s the reasoning that says the Shadows launch is more of a factor than everything else going on in the world right now?
Completelu Average
Newcomer
How can you or anyone else have data that Ubisoft refuses to release to the public?
Ubisoft themselves will only discuss the number of players which ignores the fact that the game has been available to play for free to anyone with a Ubisoft+ account, and thus, isn't increasing their revenue from the game at all. (Unless you have data to support a counter claim that it's somehow increasing Ubisoft+ subscriptions)
So the data you're wanting simply doesn't exist.
However, if Assassin's Creed Shadows was the major hit Ubisoft needed and wanted, would they have spun off their most valuable IPs into a separate company which Tencent now owns a significantly larger percentage of? This is just conjecture on my part, but I don't believe Ubisoft would have made that Tencent deal if Assassin's Creed was a huge hit and Ubisoft's finances were improving without Tencent. Because what is left of Ubisoft after this Tencent deal is a software company with no Far Cry, no Assassin's Creed, no Tom Clancy, and 19,000 employees with no AAAA games to make.
Quarterly earnings reports is how. They do talk about earnings, especially as it relates to product releases, they're a publically traded company. And if the data doesn't exist, as you imply, then you can't logically conclude either way whether the game was terrible or not. Which, by the way, makes me glad someone recussitated this thread for precisely this reason:
Assassin's Creed Shadows Hits 2 Million Players 2 Days After Release, Ubisoft Says It’s Now Surpassed Origins and Odyssey Launches - IGN
Ubisoft says Assassin's Creed Shadows has hit the 2 million players mark two days after its release date, surpassing the launches of both Origins and Odyssey.
Mat Piscatella (@matpiscatella.bsky.social)
Here's a fun one... Assassin's Creed: Shadows has been the best-selling video game in the US for each of its first 3 weeks in market, according to Circana's Retail Tracking Service (dollar sales, latest data through April 5th). Currently ranks #2 year-to-date trailing only Monster Hunter: Wilds.
bsky.app
Discussion - 73% of Assassin's Creed Shadows sales are on Consoles and 27% are on PC, according to the VGC
According to further data seen by VGC, Shadows delivered the second-highest Day 1 sales revenue in the franchise’s history, behind only Valhalla. Notably, it did so launching in March, when other series entries arrived during the more lucrative Thanksgiving season, and did not benefit from the...
icon-era.com
As it turns out, we have some data! And the data we have points to sales being absolutely, positively "just fine."
Completelu Average
Newcomer
Great.
Do let me know when the quarterly report for the current quarter is released.
And don't bother posting any of the stupid "X number of players" headlines. It's meaningless when everyone with a Ubisoft+ account plays the games for free, and you have no idea if a person playing the game on Monday, and then logs in and plays more on Tuesday morning is counted as one player or two. It's a meaningless number.
And as for Mat Piscatella, that's US only. Would you like me to post Japanese only sales numbers and say that's indicative of Ubisoft's global sales? Surely it's just as accurate as yours. Let's do that, shall we?
Famitsu Sales: 3/17/25 – 3/23/25 [Update]
Famitsu has published its estimated physical game software data for Japan for the week of March 17, 2025 to March 23, 2025.
www.gematsu.com
Wow, not even 20,000 copies sold in one of the largest gaming markets on the planet. Hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm.
And Assassin's Creed has sold just over 370k on Steam, so that would make what, about 1.4 million copies sold in total, globally? And this is "just fine" to you?
Would you mind telling me what the production and marketing budget for this game was? Because once you deduct console licensing fees and distributor/retailer cut this game has only made Ubisoft about $65 million based on your numbers. I'm willing to bet it's not even a quarter way to breaking even, and I don't see sales rates increasing any time soon, do you?
As I've already stated in prior responses to this thread. Accordantly, you can let me know when you have any hard data to support your own posting about your own statements. Until then, your opinions are no better or worse than mine.
Bluntly, I can post whatever details I find reasonably support my position. They're no more or less meaningless than your opinions, of which you've posted no actual data for.
Funny story: if you read the rest of this thread, you'll find we already discussed those Gematsu numbers. Did you go find that conversation? Because I already walked through that example in great detail. Here, lemme help you:
Would it surprise you to learn AC:S is still the 2nd highest selling PS5 title according to Gematsu's current numbers? Atellera Yumia on PS5 got left in the dust, but Monster Hunter Wilds is still selling like gangbusters.
Turns out we don't know, because the numbers you posted are only physical copies, and only from two countries (if you count my post with yours), and neither one is current. Furthermore, digital copies are sold from a multitude of outlets, not just steam. Until you have actual data to refute claims, then your opinions are no more or less valid than mine. But even further than that: what is it that you're hoping to prove? That the newest release of AC is somehow an inferior title to its predecessors? That it's not going to save Ubi? That you just don't like it and therefore nobody else should?
Why are you so incredulous that it might actually be a reasonably decent selling title? Why does that seem to make you so angry?
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Dominik D
Regular
Shadows hasn't been out even for a single month. Valhalla was 1) second most profitable game in Ubi history and it 2) made 1 billion USD in revenue in 15 months. So far Shadows did 1/4 of that in 1/16th the time. AAA games typically have massive drop in sales several weeks after release so it may not reach Valhalla levels but it doesn't look like a flop so far. AC games tend to have a small but stead and long tail in sales and find audience even years after their release. That's why they sell 7-12 mil units per game.
Johnny Awesome
Veteran
I'm in the camp that believes the game isn't a flop, but that sales were hurt by the direction they took with the game.
It's hard to say whether they were hurt enough to change company fortunes. The devil's in the details and we don't have them.
It's hard to say whether they were hurt enough to change company fortunes. The devil's in the details and we don't have them.
I think it was also helped by the direction they took. There is a certain amount of fetishization by modern society of Samurai/Ninja themes. Shadows also had a pretty good ad campaign. They cut some scenes together with a lot of action, showed off the Samurai and Ninja action, and basically told you nothing about the story. So anyone who might potentially get turned off by any of the stuff that some people think turns everyone off... Well they would have to pay to find that stuff unless they were engrossed in internet rage culture.
Could they have made some better choices? Maybe. But the game scored well, and sold well. So I don't really see how it was seriously hurt by any of it's controversies. Basically the same thing happened with Hogwarts, where there was definitely a vocal pushback against the game, but it was obviously a success. They could have made a non-licensed wizard game, but I don't think anyone here would believe that a game of equal quality that wasn't licensed would have sold quite as well. And it's the same thing with Assassin's Creed with Ninjas. They could have gone with another location or theme, but the game was certainly helped by the direction they went with.
I don't think the game could ever have been enough to change the company's fortunes - Ubi's problems are far bigger than that. People measuring Shadow's success in terms of ability to save the company are just picking an unrealistic metric that no game short of a Fortnite or GTA could attain. For me, the argument of Shadow's sales has to be about Ubi policy and the impact of social themes on game sales. Shadows sales could provide supporting evidence that social themes can tank a game if sales were terrible. Sales are strong enough to show these choices are not hugely damaging to game sales, and as such the blame of Ubi's misfortunes can't be placed wholly, or even in noteworthy part, to the inclusion of social content in their games.
That ends the meaningful discussion about Shadows and ongoing discussion about whether it sold a lot or not is moot, unless someone can present whatever theory that they are using Shadows metrics to test. So for @Cappuccino, what are they measuring Shadows against and why? What is the threshold for good or bad sales? If it's 'make enough money to save Ubisoft' then, as I say, it was never going to sell that much so why pick that as the test for success?
… so it’s not even going to match an entry from 5 years ago? That sounds pretty horrible, considering it likely cost more to make.
a single release doing well could absolutely reverse a company’s fortunes. If there’s no feasible way Shadows pulls them out of looming bankruptcy then what is the point of developing it?
Didn't Spider-Man 2 cost 3x the budget of the first game and sell about half as many? Is SM2 considered a failure?
I’d consider it a failure compared to the first game if that’s true, yeah. I think most would consider that at least a half flop.
I’ll say, just speaking Zeitgeist-wise, definitely saw a lot less people care about SM2 than SM1.