Many speculated that Assassin’s Creed Shadows would be one of the best selling games in the entire series thanks to its intense marketing, novel dual protagonist approach, and long-requested feudal Japan setting. With Ubisoft announcing that it’s reached two million players already, that speculation appears to have been well-founded. Despite some really encouraging sales and engagement numbers, both officially revealed and reported, a top analyst now claims that its strong performance may not be strong enough, saying that Shadows isn’t “the smash hit Ubisoft desperately needs.”
Despite taking things back to the roots of the series with the smaller-scale Mirage, Assassin’s Creed Shadows is a return to Ubisoft’s massive, open-world RPG formula. While not as painfully big as Valhalla, it’s still a mammoth game. However, the draw of playing as either super stealthy assassin Naoe or the bruising warrior Yasuke, plus its Japanese setting, is seeing it sell pretty well.
As mentioned, Ubisoft triumphantly announced a couple of days ago that two million players have already picked up Assassin’s Creed Shadows. Today, it’s been reported by VGC that in terms of sales revenue, Shadows has achieved the second biggest launch in the series, behind only 2020’s Valhalla. By being available on Steam on day one, it’s also now the leading game in the series on Valve’s platform.
After a series of underperforming releases, such as Star Wars Outlaws and free-to-play shooter XDefiant, Shadows delivers some long overdue positive news for Ubisoft. However, one leading videogames analyst has claimed that these figures aren’t going to completely turn the company’s fortunes around.
MIDiA Research’s Rhys Elliott says that “the numbers do NOT reflect [the] smash hit Ubisoft desperately needs” and predicts that “given the scope and development time of Assassin’s Creed Shadows, the title has almost certainly not broken-even yet.”
While launching on Steam straight away was certainly a boon for the game, Elliot compares Shadows’ numbers on the platform to the port of Ghost of Tsushima, which treads on similar ground to the new Assassin’s Creed. Despite it being a port of a then-four-year-old game, Ghost of Tsushima sold roughly twice as many copies on Steam at launch than Shadows, according to data pulled from Alinea Analytics.
Assassin’s Creed Shadows’ Steam sales also pale in comparison to some of 2025’s true mega hits so far. Three days after launch, Shadows has apparently sold 310,000 copies. In a similar time frame, Split Fiction shifted 882,500 units on Steam, and the gargantuan Monster Hunter Wilds sold almost ten times better than Shadows with 3.7 million units, according to Alinea’s data.
So, despite it being one of the most successful launches in the long-running series’ history, Assassin’s Creed Shadows might not be enough to turn things around for Ubisoft. The fact that it’s not out-performed Valhalla is also a bit surprising and concerning for me. Yes, as others have pointed out, Shadows isn’t launching in the series’ usual pre-holidays window due to the delays it suffered. But this is a heavily requested setting, with plenty of new and enticing features, that’s based on the same open-world familiarity of Valhalla and predecessors like Odyssey and Origins. To see it currently tracking below Eivor’s adventure in England is a shame.
If you are currently exploring Japan with Naoe and Yasuke, we’ve got a huge library of guides to help you out. For example, you can check out all the Assassin’s Creed Shadows legendary gear locations, or find out how to recruit all the Assassin’s Creed Shadows allies.
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