There’s a new sheriff in town
Assassin’s Creed has long been thought of as Ubisoft’s flagship franchise. It may be time to overhaul that line of thinking.
Ubisoft has released its third quarter 2018-2019 financials and there’s a surprising statistic about the 2018 calendar year: Far Cry 5 apparently outsold Assassin’s Creed Odyssey by a significant margin. Ubisoft boasts that Far Cry 5 was the fourth best-selling video game of 2018; Assassin’s Creed Odyssey was tenth.
No hard numbers were given but Ubisoft isn’t disappointed in Assassin’s Creed‘s performance. Odyssey had a fantastic launch, and ended up slightly exceeding expectations. But Far Cry 5 (also with no actual sales numbers) did much better and Ubisoft doesn’t seem amazed by that. People were evidently very jazzed to play a religious zealot cult shooter.
It’s true that Far Cry had a lot more of the year to work with. It launched in March, compared to Assassin’s Creed‘s early October release. October is ample time for that surge of short-term revenue, though. That left nearly three full months for Assassin’s Creed to rack up sales.
Far Cry 5‘s strong performance was almost certainly a major contributing factor in Ubisoft’s eagerness to roll out a wacky spin-off sequel in New Dawn. Also, it should be noted that neither series is struggling by any means; in an investors’ call, Ubisoft CEO Yves Guillemot mentioned the publisher expects entries in its top franchises to move around 15 to 20 million units in the medium-term. Everyone is seemingly doing fine, but Far Cry might’ve dethroned the long-standing king of Ubisoft’s lineup.
