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.
Source: Destructoid Far Cry sells better than Assassin’s Creed, apparently