Assassin's Creed Odyssey gains 90% more players due to Christopher Nolan's 'The Odyssey'

We recently covered how Christopher Nolan's The Odyssey sent gamers back to Assassin's Creed Odyssey using Steam numbers alone, and now a new analysis backs that up across every platform.

Games analytics firm Alinea Analytics has published harder numbers on just how big this moment has been, and they go well beyond the movie alone. Combined daily active users for Odyssey across Steam, Xbox, and PlayStation sat around 122,000 on July 17, the day Nolan's film hit cinemas. Ten days later, that number climbed to 233,000, a staggering 90% jump.

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Xbox saw the wildest swing, up 134% to 84,000 daily players, while PlayStation nearly doubled to 114,000. Steam, by comparison, only grew 26%, which tracks given Odyssey isn't sitting on a Steam subscription the way it is on Game Pass and PS Plus. That also lines up with our rough Steam concurrent player numbers from earlier.

Assassin's Creed Odyssey and its sibling Origins already crossed 40 million players apiece thanks largely to Ubisoft leaning on cloud and subscription access, and that same setup is exactly why a movie about Greek mythology could send six figures' worth of players back into an eight-year-old game overnight. There's basically zero friction between watching a Nolan epic and booting up its unofficial game companion when it's already sitting in a library you're paying for.

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What makes this genuinely interesting is that Odyssey wasn't even beloved when it launched back in 2018. It got flack for being a bloated 100-plus hour RPG that ditched the stealth-assassin roots longtime fans wanted, along with mercenary protagonists that felt like a departure from the series' identity. That's the same fatigue that's fueled interest in throwback projects like Black Flag Resynced and its stellar performance on Steam earlier this summer.

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Assassin's Creed Odyssey's story has nothing to do with Nolan's film either. It's set during the Peloponnesian War, centuries after Homer's actual epic, so the connection between the two is more about Greek vibes and setting than actual plot.

None of that seems to matter much right now. Players are treating Odyssey's take on ancient Greece as a fitting complement to the movie, and Ubisoft has happily leaned into it, resurfacing Discovery Tour and running social campaigns off the film's hype. It's a neat little reminder that a game doesn't need to be universally loved, or even directly connected to something, to catch a second wind.

Frequently Asked Questions

TweakBot answers common questions about this news using TweakTown's own coverage from this page and related content from our archive. Tap a question to reveal the answer, or type your own below.

Question #1

How much did daily active players for Assassin's Creed Odyssey increase across all platforms after Nolan's The Odyssey release?

Combined daily active players across Steam, Xbox, and PlayStation rose from about 122,000 on July 17 to 233,000 ten days later, a 90% increase. This represents an increase of roughly 111,000 daily players.

Answered

Question #2

Which platform saw the largest percentage rise in Odyssey players, and what were the post-spike daily player numbers reported?

Xbox saw the largest percentage rise, up 134% to about 84,000 daily players. PlayStation nearly doubled to roughly 114,000 daily players, and Steam grew 26% (post-spike Steam daily number not specified).

Answered

Question #3

How did Steam's player growth for Odyssey compare to Xbox and PlayStation following the movie's release?

Steam's player growth was much smaller: Steam grew 26% following the movie, compared with Xbox which rose 134% to about 84,000 daily players and PlayStation which nearly doubled to about 114,000 daily players. The combined platforms went from roughly 122,000 to 233,000 daily users, a 90% increase overall.

Answered

Question #4

How does Odyssey's availability on subscription services factor into the surge in players described in the article?

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Sometimes the right cultural moment does all the work, and Ubisoft just needed to give people a gentle reminder that Assassin's Creed Odyssey still exists.