Assassin’s Creed Shadows has seen over 3 million players since launch, Ubisoft has announced.The player milestone comes seven days after Shadows launched on May 20, and is up from the 2 million reported on day two, surpassing the launches of both Origins and Odyssey.Other stats reported by Ubisoft today were already revealed by IGN’s coverage of an internal email in which the company contextualized Shadows’ opening weekend performance, saying it’s better compared to Origins and Odyssey rather than the “perfect storm” 2020’s Valhalla launched into.Shadows saw the second highest day one sales revenue in Assassin’s Creed franchise history, behind only Valhalla, the biggest Ubisoft day one ever on the PlayStation Store, and has seen over 40 million hours played so far.There is enormous pressure on Assassin’s Creed Shadows to do well for Ubisoft globally after a number of delays and the sales failure of last year’s Star Wars Outlaws. Indeed, Ubisoft suffered a number of high-profile flops, layoffs, studio closures, and game cancellations in the run up to Assassin’s Creed Shadows’ release.Things got so bad at Ubisoft that its founding Guillemot family was reportedly exploring talks with Chinese mega-corp Tencent and other investors on a buyout deal that would let it preserve control of the company’s intellectual property. So, the video game world is watching Assassin’s Creed Shadows’ early performance closely for signs of its success — or failure.There’s also a lot of attention on Shadows’ Steam concurrents, which are being compared to those of other triple-A single-player games that recently released, as well as previous Assassin’s Creed games on Valve’s platform.Shadows became the most-played Assassin’s Creed game ever on Steam over the weekend with 64,825 peak concurrent players, although it’s worth noting that it was the first game in the series to launch day-one there since 2018’s Odyssey. BioWare’s single-player RPG Dragon Age: The Veilguard saw a peak of 89,418 players on Valve’s platform.The Complete Assassin’s Creed TimelineIt’s hard to make a call on whether Shadows is below, meeting, or exceeding Ubisoft’s expectations without knowing what those expectations were, a revenue figure, or a sales figure.Money talks, of course, and irrespective of player numbers and engagement, it will be revenue brought in by Assassin’s Creed Shadows that determines the fate of not just the game, but Ubisoft itself. We may not get a clear picture of that until Ubisoft’s next financial report in the coming months.Adventuring across feudal Japan? Check out our comprehensive Assassin’s Creed Shadows guide, including our Assassin’s Creed Shadows walkthrough, our detailed Assassin’s Creed Shadows Interactive Map, and our guide to all the crucial things Assassin’s Creed Shadows doesn’t tell you.Wesley is the UK News Editor for IGN. Find him on Twitter at @wyp100. You can reach Wesley at wesley_yinpoole@ign.com or confidentially at wyp100@proton.me.
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Assassin’s Creed Shadows Now Up to 3 Million Players, but Still No Sales Figure From Ubisoft
