It's been a rough year for Ubisoft says things are looking good—by one metric, at least.
"Positive previews that highlight the immersive world, stunning graphics and variety of gameplay brought by the dual-protagonist approach," Ubisoft wrote in its Q3 2024-25 financial report. "Pre-orders are tracking solidly, in line with those of Assassin’s Creed Odyssey, the second most successful entry of the franchise."
Preorders don't tell the whole story, not by a long shot, especially when they've only been open for a few weeks. But there's not much else to go on in the pre-release period, so you go with what you've got—and as far as it goes, Ubisoft CEO Frederick Duguet said the numbers are encouraging.
"Odyssey's been the second-biggest performer in the franchise history, very close to Valhalla in of units sold on a comparable time basis," Duguet said during today's investors call. "At the time when we launched Odyssey, it set a new benchmark for the franchise, it was a very successful first week. So that's what we can say at this stage. When we look back, Odyssey has been accumulating 40 million players to date, so it's been really a great success. So what we see as a preorder benchmark is encouraging."
Duguet acknowledged that the bulk of the preorder period still lies ahead, and that leaves a lot of time for things to either catch fire or fizzle out. But, he said, "What we can see to date, it's really positive."
The other upside for make-or-break as it gets), Shadows "showed a level of confidence I haven't seen from the publisher in years. Six hours is a drop in the bucket of what's likely a 40-60 hour game, but I'm feeling a lot better two months ahead of Shadows than I did two months ahead of Star Wars Outlaws."
