Ubisoft has a lot riding on Assassin's Creed Shadows, and it seems the extra time in the oven did wonders for the game, which is the second best-selling of 2025, only behind Monster Hunter Wilds.
Mat Piscatella, an executive director and video game industry analyst at Circana, posts on Bluesky that "Assassin's Creed: Shadows debuted as the best-selling game of March, ranking 2nd [year-to-date]." It amassed more than two million players just a few days after launch, so this result isn't surprising.
Ubisoft already mentioned that Shadows garnered the second-highest revenue of any game in the series for the company, only behind Valhalla. It also noted that Valhalla's success was "a perfect storm we may never see again."
It came out during the COVID lockdowns when people were spending a lot more on video games, and was released across two console generations, whereas Shadows is only available on current-gen hardware.
Ubisoft has struck a business deal with Tencent that will see a $4.3 billion subsidiary "spearhead development" on new Assassin's Creed, Far Cry, and Rainbow Six games. What that means exactly isn't entirely clear, but after a series of missteps like "softer than expected" sales for Star Wars Outlaws and the closure of XDefiant and its San Francisco studio, Ubisoft needs wins, and Shadows has been a huge one.
Overall, spending on games is down, though, so in a year already filled with layoffs, more could be on the horizon.
For now, check out all the upcoming video game release dates of 2025. Maybe one of them will dethrone Monster Hunter.
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