Assassin's Creed Shadows shows early signs of success

Ubisoft says that Assassin's Creed Shadows pre-orders are showing early signs of success, tracking closely with Odyssey's thunderous performance.

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Ubisoft has a lot riding on Assassin's Creed Shadows. The company isn't doing great right now and is exploring options to either sell parts of itself off or to go private. Shadows will determine how much cash Ubisoft has, in part, to pay back its debts and stay on course with its plans--all while navigating uncertain waters for the company's future.

It sounds like the feudal Japan-based Assassin's Creed is doing well, at least with initial digital pre-orders. In a recent Q4FY25 earnings call, Ubisoft management commented on AC Shadows pre-sales:

"Current pre-orders for the game are supportive, and the bulk of the pre-orders is yet to come. And while we have just opened digital pre-orders, we are happy to see that our pre-orders are already tracking on par with those of Assassin's Creed Odyssey five weeks ahead of launch, the second most successful entry of the franchise (keeping in mind that the Ubisoft+ subscription service did not exist at the time)," Ubisoft CFO Frederick Duguet said in the call.

Duguet was asked by analyst Nick Dempsey to clarify what he meant exactly by Odyssey's success--was that in units or revenue?

The actual question and response was:

Analyst Nick Dempsey - Was Odyssey the second biggest revenue generating game, or was it the second-biggest unit sales generating game...I'm just thinking it had more in-game spending than previous Assassin's Creeds. I'm just trying to think what the pre-orders might mean for our first 12 days of Shadows unit sales.

Ubisoft CEO Frederick Duguet - Yes, Odyssey's been the second-biggest performer in the franchise's history, very close to Valhalla in terms of units sold on the comparable time basis. At the time when we launched Odyssey, it set a new benchmark for the franchise, it was very successful. That's what we can say at this stage. When we look back, Odyssey has been accumulating 40 million players to date. It's really been a great success.

So what we see when we clear that benchmark...it's encouraging.

More clarification was requested but Ubisoft doubled-down, saying the current pre-order trends for Shadows were green pastures so far.

Question - Can we assume the relationship between pre-orders and actual sales that we saw back in 2018 for Odyssey could still hold in the current environment?

Ubisoft CEO Frederick Duguet - What we can see is that for the curve that we've been observing after just re-opening the digital pre-orders of Shadows, that [they're] really supportive. Of course the bulk of the pre-orders for the next 5 weeks is still ahead of us. So what we can see today, it's very positive.

"There are plenty of indicators that we look closely at to see how the game will be expected by our players," CEO Yves Guillemot said.

Elsewhere in the call, Ubisoft's CFO said that the company would receive a "tremendous cash benefit" from Assassin's Creed Shadows