In the recent Ubisoft earnings call, Chief Financial Officer Alain Martinez revealed that first week sales for Assassin’s Creed Syndicate were down compared to last year’s Assassin’s Creed Unity – something he contributes to the bug-filled launch of Unity:
Clearly in our first week we were impacted by what happened with Assassin’s Creed Unity.
On the plus side, week two sales for Syndicate are up over Unity, and CEO Yves Guillemot added that they see the sales trajectory for Syndicate as being similar to Assassin’s Creed IV Black Flag, which started out slow but is over 11 million sold lifetime:
We seem to experience the same sales curve as [Black Flag]. Versus Unity, Syndicate was down in the first week but nicely outperformed it in its second week as it benefited from positive word of mouth.
Guillemot wouldn’t say if Syndicate’s two-week sales were higher than Unity, but he did mention that player engagement for Syndicate is much higher than last year, and they are confident it will sell well over the holidays.
Ubisoft also talked about how focusing on single-player in games like Assassin’s Creed and Far Cry is a better approach, and people are happier without multiplayer in Syndicate, as it was “an issue” in Unity.
[Source: Eurogamer, Games Industry]
