Sales prediction for AC Shadows?

[Tamamushiiro]

How many copies do you think Shadows will sell?

I think Shadows will sell over 13 million copies, as much as Ghost of Tsushima.

[werwolfgaming]

Probably more than ghost since ac is well beloved franchise with a more or less cult following still and japan has been 1 off the most requested history settings since ac2 id wager maybe 15 mil to 20 mil unless they royally mess this up

[[{******---Dead4Life---******}]]

I think way more than ghost or even CoD !
I think sales for this one will be a record in the game industry of 1 billion, easily!

[MIND ЯEWIND 2]

i think shadows will sell 50 millions copies,just look at the trailer how good the game looks

[jcbunch4]

We don't have a lot of numbers to go off of. If you're going off the trailer then comparing the likes to the likes on previous AC games like Origins, Odyssey, Valhalla, and even other games like GoW 2018, GoT, and Elden Ring it's doing great, Valhalla is the only one of those 6 games to have more likes on it's trailer and Shadows is more 90% of Valhalla's.

On the other hand SteamDB has Shadows at only about 8.6k wishlist right now. Now, that looks bad, cause for concern, but it's important to remember Vallhala sold over 20 million units before it came to Steam between consoles and Ubisoft connect, think in part to Covid. Origins launched on Steam day 1 and it only peaked at 41k. Odyssey launched day 1 on steam and peaked at 62k. Both those games still sold well over 10 million. Steam really is not the main source of sales for AC.

Personally I don't think it will do worse then Origins or Odyssey but I do think it's gonna fall well short of Valhalla, 10-15 million.

[jcbunch4]

Originally posted by jest:

Ubisoft spams Youtube and X with cloned bots, which is why there's such a disparity with wishlists/preorders. It's likely done to fool shareholders, given how blatant and obvious they are.

There's been a lot of coverage as it's a consistent practice for them.

https://tech4gamers.com/assassins-creed-shadows-bots/

The problem with this argument is it's about comments which don't matter for sales. Likes are the only indicator of positive interest(which is the likely-hood to buy the game) one can get on a YouTube trailer. Ubisoft has other games and if they were inflating their numbers they would do it for all their games so what do they have for recent games, Star Wars Outlaws only got about 53k likes, XDefiant 16k, Skull and Bones 34k, Prince of Persia the Lost Crown 17k, AC Mirage 231k compared to AC Shadows 301k. It doesn't seem to be boosted, I do think people are interested but are waiting to see the final product closer to launch before they make up their minds.

[jcbunch4]

Originally posted by jest:

Is there a mechanism that prevents their bots from liking videos? Or is it just an assumption that they're only flooding comments.

I can't say on a technical level, but the bot comments only showed up months after the video was posted if I remember right. Shadows was nearly 290k months before the bots which was also the same time Outlaws was siting at around 50k before it launched so if they wanted to boost a game they probably should have boosted Outlaws to satisfy Disney and their other investors. So considering we haven't seen any signs of boosted numbers for any of their other videos I'm going to assume they haven't boosted the Shadows trailer. The ratio of likes to views is probably an important stat for their marketing department so I would think they would want to keep it pure. It's an assumption you don't have to agree with, but were never going to know one way or the other so.

[werwolfgaming]

Ill just jump in and point out youtube has algorithms to detect fake accs and likes and if it detects bot accounts they will remove views and likes from the detected bot accounts

[jcbunch4]

Originally posted by jest:

They had their network of over 1500 accounts purged on X after multiple spam campaigns, so their remaining avenues are comments, and upvoting on Youtube and Reddit.

That shows a history of social media manipulation going back at least a year.

https://thatparkplace.com/report-bot-account-promoting-star-wars-outlaws-suspended-by-elon-musks-x/

Wouldn't trust any metrics on Youtube given their rampant botting, besides the like to dislike ratio which have so far predicted a game's profitability.

Concord had a 1:10 like to dislike ratio.
Dustborn 1:31
Unknown 9 1.9 : 36k

ACS is 5:32 (25k likes 160k dislikes)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zKua34QXhMA

I don't follow anything on x but 1500 accounts would be a pretty minimal influence on youtube when the debut trailer has 301k likes. We'd have to just guess how many might be bots, 1k, 5k, 10k, 20k, 50k, 100k and there no way to get that right. I mean, alot of their games are under 30k likes so they would have to be boting less then that unless you think this is the only trailer they botted in mass. There's just no way to no that.

When it comes to dislikes I don't see how they matter. First, dislikes aren't actually available and the usual source of those numbers is Return YouTube Dislike extension. That works by gathering data from users who have the extension installed as they hit like or dislike on a video, rationing those numbers against each-other then using the publicly available likes on the video to form a best guess. If the likes were inflated so to would the dislikes then be inflated. Second, they don't actually matter as a sales metric, if someone watches a trailer and either hits the dislike button or does nothing but leave, in neither case did they like the trailer, and anyone who hasn't hit the dislike is still undecided right.

Let's take the data from Return YouTube Dislike
Assassin's Creed Shadows: Official World Premiere Trailer
10,189,042 views
301,072 likes
599,657 dislikes.
Taking this as accurate less then 3% liked it, less then 6% disliked, and 91% neither liked nor disliked the trailer and are still undecided.

Concord - Reveal Cinematic Trailer | PS5 Games
599,437 views(about 6% Shadows views)
7,636 likes(about 2.5% of Shadows likes)
41,327 dislikes(about 7% Shadows dislikes)
That's less then 1.5% likes, 7% dislike, and 91.5% undecided. So it had only 6% the draw of eyes and a conversion rate half that of Shadows.

Dustborn - Reveal Trailer | PS5 & PS4 Games
124,087 views(less then 1.5% of Shadows)
1,270 likes(less then .5% of Shadows)
15,506 dislikes(about 2.5% of Shadows)
That about 1% likes, about 12% dislikes, and 87% undecided.

Unknown 9: Awakening - Official Teaser Trailer
185,813 views(less then 2% Shadows)
2,838 likes(less then 1% Shadows)
23,142 dislikes(about 4% of Shadows)
That's about 1.5% likes, about 13% dislike, and 85.5% undecided.

Now for another comparison
Ghost of Tsushima - PGW 2017 Announce Trailer | PS4
3,194,469 views(about 32% Shadows)
66,260 likes(about 22% Shadows)
659 dislikes(about .1% of Shadows)
That gives GoT 2% likes, about 0% dislikes, and 98% undecided

Assassin’s Creed Valhalla: Cinematic World Premiere Trailer | Ubisoft [NA]
9,449,971 views(about 93% Shadows)
324,919 likes(about 108% of Shadows)
15,170 dislikes(about 3% of Shadows)
That gives Valhalla about 3.5% likes, less then 1% dislikes, and about 95.5% undecided

At the end of the day the reason Concord Dustrborn and Unknown 9 failed was because they couldn't get the public interested enough to even watch the trailer indicated by low view numbers and even those that did had a terrible conversion rate. AC Shadow's is far more in line with games like GoT and AC Valhalla then those type of games. That doesn't guarante anything, but with the curent data it's far more likely to land 10+ million sales then sub 1 million. If you don't trust the data that's fine, but then it's just a random guess and I like data so I base my expectation off of that.

[UltimatelynotQuite]

Day 1 will be a slight disappointment but with a long, fat tail.

[jcbunch4]

Originally posted by jest:

The closest game we can compare Shadows to - in terms of scope, marketing and brand recognition - is Star Wars Outlaws.

Star Wars is iconic, with the most viewed Outlaws trailer receiving an almost 1:1 ratio.

Even that struggled to sell 1 million.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/paultassi/2024/10/01/new-report-claims-star-wars-outlaws-sold-worse-than-you-think/

I don't see how Shadows will surpass a more established franchise. IMO they'll get sub 1m the first month (best case scenario), and dramatically peter off once all the Twitch/Youtube ridicule farmers have made their money.

Outlaws didn't even get 1/3 the views of Shadows, it's actually more comparable to GoT with it's views and likes, GoT definitely did better at launch, I think they had around 6 million 1st year and have gone over 13 million since. The last projection I saw for Outlaws was them dropping from 7.5 million to 5 million for year one, I don't know if there going to get there.

But for Shadows, strictly speaking, AC Mirage is the closest compassion as it has the exact same brand recognition.
Assassin's Creed Mirage: Cinematic World Premiere
9,118,550 views(about 90% of Shadows)
231,916 likes(about 77% of Shadows)
6,981 dislikes(about 1% of Shadows)
Mirage got 2.5% likes, less then .1% dislikes, and about 97.5% undecided.

Mirage still sold over 5 million. If you want to be pessimistic about it that's kind of the floor I could see of people who will buy AC when they see AC. Japan is more popular then Baghdad by a wide margin and it's a full game with a open map which is why I think a lot of those undecided people like myself who decided not to get Mirage are going to get Shadows. It has more appeal, it has a higher conversion rate, I still don't think it will do Valhalla numbers, but 10-15 million feels about right for an AC game like this.

[jcbunch4]

Originally posted by jest:

Remember, the dislikes shown are only a fraction of real dislikes, as most don't have the extension.

I don't think you know how the extension works. It uses user data to get a ratio from the users, say 80 users watch a video and hit like or dislike, 10 likes, 70 dislikes for a ratio of 7 to 1 then it checks the video and see 10,000 likes on the video so guess 70,000 dislikes. That's why the numbers shift so much because if another user then goes on and hits like it becomes 6.3 to 1 so now it reports 63,000 dislikes and that's why people are always accusing Ubisoft of removing dislikes, it's just a small minority can have a huge swing with these massive numbers. That's why I don't really consider the dislike ratio from these sites as they are far to easy to manipulate, a few hundred bad actors can be counted for tens of thousands of dislikes.

[jcbunch4]

Originally posted by jest:

That's interesting, that the dislikes are extrapolated from a ratio.

Still, the dislike>like ratio has managed to predict the games that were financial losses. Are there any cases where the curse has been broken?

That I don't know, like I said, I don't focus on the dislikes because there is no reliable data. I would ask the counter question, how often do games with 10+ million views and 300k likes fail?

We see that views do matter, games like Saints Row 2022 got 2.2 million views 45k likes, 76k dislikes, a bad ratio and failed but it still sold 1.7 million copies. Dragon Age Veilguard has 2.3 million views 47k likes and 56k dislikes, a more balanced ratio. It's not doing great but it's still sold over a million already so it might 2-3 million. Star Wars Outlaws got 3.2 million views, 54k likes compared to only 24k dislikes, a decent ratio right, but it's still considered a failure. Even then it's also sold over a million copies and might do 2-3 million in it's first year.

You'll notice all these games are considered flops and the ratios are very different but the views and likes are very similar. Now Shadows has 3-4 times the views and 5-6 times the likes. If we say those three games average sales are 2 million and Shadows is 5 times as popular then 10 million would be the estimate.

[Unrealtairo]

Originally posted by jest:

The closest game we can compare Shadows to - in terms of scope, marketing and brand recognition - is Star Wars Outlaws.

Star Wars is iconic, with the most viewed Outlaws trailer receiving an almost 1:1 ratio.

Even that struggled to sell 1 million.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/paultassi/2024/10/01/new-report-claims-star-wars-outlaws-sold-worse-than-you-think/

I don't see how Shadows will surpass a more established franchise. IMO they'll get sub 1m the first month (best case scenario), and dramatically peter off once all the Twitch/Youtube ridicule farmers have made their money.

Yep, bigger problem is people just don't trust Ubisoft anymore at all after that "AAAA" game bs they pulled with Skull & Bones and a few others.

I have had Outlaws on my wishlist for a while but never bothered pulling the trigger because Ubisoft is still Ubisoft.

I don't feel like the new Anno is going to be anywhere close to 1800 either.
Same way as they butchered Settlers, its been nothing but downhill fast.

[Maschendraht]

I think it's difficult to compare AC Shadows to other games since there's less marketing for AC Shadows in comparison to other games at this point in time before their release. They'll probably increase their marketing efforts soon which will bring in more views and likes for the trailers. This will also mean a more positive coverage overall in comparison to the past months where the hate content farmes had a huge impact.

A short, but high intense marketing campaign with major news every week might outrun the hate content. The hate content is secondary and reactive in nature, so tthe grifters need time to do their spinning and spread it. By the time it spreads, the next major news will already be out and dominate the content people see.

As of today, we don't kinow if this will work or if this is even the strategy Ubisoft will use. So there are a lot of inkown factors still.

[AnihilatoR]

Considering all the bad reputation this game received due to the way Ubisoft handled some issues like the broken Tori gate, the sword copied from a character in One Piece without licence, the fake Yasuke background who was brought to light being completely fabricated, this just looks like a massive mess! If the game doesn't have that failed stealth mechanic copied from Star Wars Outlaws, it might work it out even with all these problems, since people do like Assassin's Creed franchise overall.

The new gameplay trailer showed a decent game, might work out but I wouldn't bet neither. If they released before, I'm not sure how it would have sold. Now waiting for the release, hype absent.