Ubisoft’s latest historical role-playing game Assassin’s Creed Shadows has already reached 2 million players.
Ubisoft confirmed the milestone in a post on Instagram, adding that Assassin’s Creed Shadows had “surpassed the launches” of 2017’s Assassin’s Creed Origins and 2018’s Assassin’s Creed Odyssey.
Ubisoft is almost certainly using the phrase players as it’s including anyone jumping in through the publisher’s Ubisoft+ subscription service, in addition to anyone outright buying the game.
The choice of wording also seems to imply that Assassin’s Creed Shadows has not overtaken the launch number for 2020’s Assassin’s Creed Vahalla, the prior mainline entry in the series.
Assassin’s Creed Valhalla had a gargantuan launch and sustained sales, with Ubisoft saying at the time that it was the biggest launch of the entire franchise.
Assassin’s Creed Shadows is a critical game for Ubisoft
While we don’t have exact sales for every single Assassin’s Creed game week-by-week, we do have enough prior milestones and PR statements to safely guess that Assassin’s Creed Shadows is firmly the second-most successful game in the series so far.
Naturally, that could change in either direction as time goes on and depending on what post-launch support looks like. The game’s success is critical for Ubisoft, as the embattled publisher has faced dozens of game cancellations and delays over the last few years.
This is combined with its claim that last year’s Star Wars Outlaws underperformed expectations, while it is also winding down free-to-play shooter XDefiant, shuttering multiple development studios in the process.
Reports indicate Ubisoft’s founding family is interested in spinning off some assets into a new controlling company with the aid of investors like Tencent, or possibly even selling some IP to other companies, but nothing official has happened just yet.
If you haven’t played it yet, I encourage you to check out our Assassin’s Creed Shadows review-in-progress, in which my colleague Zachary Boddy writes that “Assassin’s Creed Shadows doesn’t feel much smaller than its bloated predecessor, but it does feel more refined and focused. This is a visually stunning action-RPG adventure with varied, endlessly fun gameplay backed by serious attention to detail.”