It seems Assassin’s Creed Unity’s shaky launch haunted the first-week sales of the recently released Syndicate.
As part of Ubisoft’s latest earnings report, the publisher revealed some details on Assassin’s Creed Syndicate’s launch performance. While specifics were not released, Ubisoft did say that first-week sales for Syndicate were down when compared to Unity. Second-week sales did improve, however.
CFO Alain Martinez mentioned during an earnings call that Syndicate’s first-week performance was impacted “by what had happened with Assassin’s Creed Unity.” Unity’s launch in 2014 was plagued by bugs and technical issues, though Syndicate’s launch was much smoother. This could be why sales improved in the game’s second week.
CEO Yves Guillemot mentioned that reviews for Syndicate were mostly positive, and that word of mouth is acting in the game’s favor. He added that Syndicate’s sales trend resembles that of Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag, which sold 10 million copies by the end of 2014. Guillemot also said that Syndicate’s total playtime is “massively up” when compared to Unity. For digital versions of the latest Assassin’s Creed, “all key metrics” showed improvement over Unity.
Assassin’s Creed Syndicate is available on the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One. The PC edition is coming later this month. You can check out Gamespresso’s review of Syndicate here.