Assassin’s Creed is back in business.
It’s no secret that Assassin’s Creed was in a tough spot for the past few years. Though it receives plenty of attention from the press and mainstream audiences, the series has consistently failed to reach the level that it was on when the franchise started. Naturally, these fears lingered prior to the release of Assassin’s Creed Origins, and many (rightfully) raised concerns about it not being able to live up to the hype and falling flat.
However, a recent financial call to investors by Ubisoft has revealed that Assassin’s Creed Origins has reversed the franchises fortunes, so much so that boss Yves Guillemot concluded that the series is “officially back.”
How well did Assassin’s Creed Origins do exactly? To start, its sales were double that of its predecessor, Syndicate.
There are several factors that can be attributed to this accomplishment. First off, reviews were high — not just positive as is generally the case. Second, word of mouth helped to convince those who had been looking into the game but weren’t sold by professional reviews. Lastly, the Egyptian theme alone definitely had to catch the eye of onlookers — it’s no coincidence that this game is regarded as the best entry since Black Flag, which also had an interesting theme of its own: pirates.
However, that isn’t the only thing that Origins had going for it. As it turns out, digital sales for this latest entry were quite strong.
Compared to Syndicate which only had 15 percent of its sales as digital downloads, Origins’ was 35 percent. When this is taken into account with Activision announcing that over half of Destiny 2’s console sales were digital downloads, its probably time for more analytics firms to take this metric into account.
With numbers like that, it’s hard to dispute Guillemot’s claim about the series. Of course, now that it’s back on top, there is now the potential for history to repeat itself the franchise gets run into the ground again.
