Sales Projections with Hard Numbers

[helterskelter]

We have several confirmed data points for comparison

1) PC accounted for 27% of "activations" <- Source from Ubisoft themselves
2) 1 million players within 19(31) hours, 2 million within 60(72) hours. The numbers in parentheses are because the game was out in advanced access for 12 hours
3) concurrent peak launch day 41k with all time peak at 65k.

We also have some general projection data:

Games usually sell about 50% of their lifetime copies within 1-2 weeks and 80-90% within 6 months. Most likely Ubisoft's numbers will be better in the tail end considering how many sales they get and how deep the discounts go.

Using this data you can compare to some other games and their launches to get a picture of how AC shadows is going to do. Starfield had 2+ million players day -3 (advanced access), 6 million players day 1, and 15 million players by month 3. If we take the most optimistic projections, AC Shadows would reach around 6-7 million players by month 3. This is unrealistic because advanced access for starfield is much harder to access - you have to buy the 110 dollar edition - than just buying ACS' regular edition launch day, so realistically speaking player count would reach more like ~5 million. This also tracks as starfield launched with 330k peak concurrent - 5x ACS'.

The next question we need to answer is - what % of PC players were on steam? Ubsioft themselves only say "a very significant portion" so we have to do some guesswork here. Steam accounts for 75% of PC market share in terms of game sales. So here we are talking purely about copies SOLD. The main draw of Ubisoft Connection is the subscription, so I don't think it's reasonable to assume that actual SALES are much higher ratio wise for ACS than for other games, however, we can be extremely generous to ACS and assume that half of all PC sales were on Ubisoft+, and match that ratio with the 27% of their "activations (not sales)" that were on PC, meaning steam accoutns for slightly over 1/8 of total sales.

Let's now compare this to another game that had ~30% or so market share sales on PC - Dragon Ball Sparking Zero. As of around 6 months post release it's sold 5 million copies. Shadows CCU is almost exactly half of DBSZ's 123k, and if we give ACS the benefit of the doubt and say half of all sales were on Ubisoft Connect or Epic, then ACS looks like it's going to perform nearly identically to what DBSZ will do. Again, they will probably sell more lifetime copies due to deep discounts and earn more revenue over time given their microtransaction business model - you could probably project something more like 6-8 million over DBSZ's projected ~5.5 million lifetime sales. This is of course giving ACS near maximum benefit of the doubt, realistically I'd say it's more like to do ~5-7 million.

These are based on very early projections and subject to extremely high variance - our sample size is too low to say anything with high confidence - the most I'd give these estimates is medium confidence.

Opinions? TL;DR? Too much math?

[helterskelter]

Forgot to mention, mainline AC games are usually expected to sell upwards of 10 million. Even mirage sold 5 million in its first year. This would be an underperformance. Somewhere deep inside I like to think that people said no to anti-asian racism, but I'm sure it was only a minor factor in the grand scheme of things. Based on public sentiment, I'd wager the monetization and the grindiness of the game being designed around that are the most unpopular parts of the game.

[helterskelter]

Originally posted by Jumunji:

Originally posted by helterskelter:

We have several confirmed data points for comparison

1) PC accounted for 27% of "activations" <- Source from Ubisoft themselves
2) 1 million players within 19(31) hours, 2 million within 60(72) hours. The numbers in parentheses are because the game was out in advanced access for 12 hours
3) concurrent peak launch day 41k with all time peak at 65k.

We also have some general projection data:

Games usually sell about 50% of their lifetime copies within 1-2 weeks and 80-90% within 6 months. Most likely Ubisoft's numbers will be better in the tail end considering how many sales they get and how deep the discounts go.

Using this data you can compare to some other games and their launches to get a picture of how AC shadows is going to do. Starfield had 2+ million players day -3 (advanced access), 6 million players day 1, and 15 million players by month 3. If we take the most optimistic projections, AC Shadows would reach around 6-7 million players by month 3. This is unrealistic because advanced access for starfield is much harder to access - you have to buy the 110 dollar edition - than just buying ACS' regular edition launch day, so realistically speaking player count would reach more like ~5 million. This also tracks as starfield launched with 330k peak concurrent - 5x ACS'.

The next question we need to answer is - what % of PC players were on steam? Ubsioft themselves only say "a very significant portion" so we have to do some guesswork here. Steam accounts for 75% of PC market share in terms of game sales. So here we are talking purely about copies SOLD. The main draw of Ubisoft Connection is the subscription, so I don't think it's reasonable to assume that actual SALES are much higher ratio wise for ACS than for other games, however, we can be extremely generous to ACS and assume that half of all PC sales were on Ubisoft+, and match that ratio with the 27% of their "activations (not sales)" that were on PC, meaning steam accoutns for slightly over 1/8 of total sales.

Let's now compare this to another game that had ~30% or so market share sales on PC - Dragon Ball Sparking Zero. As of around 6 months post release it's sold 5 million copies. Shadows CCU is almost exactly half of DBSZ's 123k, and if we give ACS the benefit of the doubt and say half of all sales were on Ubisoft Connect or Epic, then ACS looks like it's going to perform nearly identically to what DBSZ will do. Again, they will probably sell more lifetime copies due to deep discounts and earn more revenue over time given their microtransaction business model - you could probably project something more like 6-8 million over DBSZ's projected ~5.5 million lifetime sales. This is of course giving ACS near maximum benefit of the doubt, realistically I'd say it's more like to do ~5-7 million.

These are based on very early projections and subject to extremely high variance - our sample size is too low to say anything with high confidence - the most I'd give these estimates is medium confidence.

Opinions? TL;DR? Too much math?

activations is not hard sales numbers lol.. mate did you read your own post you are saying everyone who activated the game has bought it at full price ??? everyone knows this is ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥

If activations were hard sales numbers they'd be projected to sell 5-7 million copies within the month. Which would be really good.

I'm using a different method to obtain rough estimates for actual hard sales numbers - which lands us at 5-7 million copies - optimistic projection, after 6 months! This would not be good for an AC mainline game.

Right now a probable estimates for total copies sold is likely around the ballpark of 1-1.5 million. This is again, not good for a mainline AC title in 2025.

[DragonBane]

Shadows will never make a profit. Most likely it will loose 100+ million dollars.

[The Former]

Pretty beefy but the effort is good. I'd suggest using headers to separate sections and make it feel less TL;DR. While the player count isn't equal to copies sold, I think this is a decent estimate, within a couple million. I'd guess closer to 10 million though, based on Odyssey's comparative perfomance. I think people are overblowing the "PLAYERS, not COPIES" distinction a little.

[helterskelter]

Originally posted by DragonBane:

Shadows will never make a profit. Most likely it will loose 100+ million dollars.

It will probably lose a good amount on sales alone yea. It's the microtransactions that may or may not earn them that money back.

[The Former]

Originally posted by DragonBane:

Shadows will never make a profit. Most likely it will loose 100+ million dollars.

100 million plus? Bold claim. To do that, they'd have to sell less than 2 million copies or so. Maybe 3 if you include marketing costs. Player engagement seems too high to go with that estimate.

[helterskelter]

Originally posted by Jumunji:

Originally posted by helterskelter:

If activations were hard sales numbers they'd be projected to sell 5-7 million copies within the month. Which would be really good.

I'm using a different method to obtain rough estimates for actual hard sales numbers - which lands us at 5-7 million copies - optimistic projection, after 6 months! This would not be good for an AC mainline game.

Right now a probable estimates for total copies sold is likely around the ballpark of 1-1.5 million. This is again, not good for a mainline AC title in 2025.

yes even the predicted numbers show a loss in profit in a big way for ubisoft which is why they still wont disclose sales numbers

They'd most likely need a Black Myth Wukong sized hit to stave off large scale restructuring. Considering Black Myth Wukong hard sold over 4x Shadows' day one player activations, this is extremely unrealistic.

Originally posted by The Former:

Originally posted by DragonBane:

Shadows will never make a profit. Most likely it will loose 100+ million dollars.

100 million plus? Bold claim. To do that, they'd have to sell less than 2 million copies or so. Maybe 3 if you include marketing costs. Player engagement seems too high to go with that estimate.

He's not too off the mark if you consider sales alone. They'd most likely earn ~50-55 (factoring in collectors and other editions) dollars of revenue off every individual sale. The budget was ~3-400 million, if they sell on the low end of the more balanced projection I gave, they'd lose ~50-150 million dollars.

[The Former]

Originally posted by Jumunji:

Originally posted by helterskelter:

If activations were hard sales numbers they'd be projected to sell 5-7 million copies within the month. Which would be really good.

I'm using a different method to obtain rough estimates for actual hard sales numbers - which lands us at 5-7 million copies - optimistic projection, after 6 months! This would not be good for an AC mainline game.

Right now a probable estimates for total copies sold is likely around the ballpark of 1-1.5 million. This is again, not good for a mainline AC title in 2025.

yes even the predicted numbers show a loss in profit in a big way for ubisoft which is why they still wont disclose sales numbers

They won't disclose sales numbers because they only do this during quarterly reports. You'll see it soon, I'm told the quarter closes on the 31st.

[helterskelter]

Originally posted by The Former:

Originally posted by Jumunji:

yes even the predicted numbers show a loss in profit in a big way for ubisoft which is why they still wont disclose sales numbers

They won't disclose sales numbers because they only do this during quarterly reports. You'll see it soon, I'm told the quarter closes on the 31st.

I'm excited to see how close my math is.

[helterskelter]

Originally posted by Jumunji:

Originally posted by The Former:

They won't disclose sales numbers because they only do this during quarterly reports. You'll see it soon, I'm told the quarter closes on the 31st.

no they tweeted at 500 000 sales for every other title so why have they yet to do it for shadows ? only logical answer is they havent even sold 500 000 copies

That's ludicrous. The've definitely sold over 500k copies.

I hate this game too, as a vietnamese american, but bro...let's not spread actual propaganda here.

[The Former]

Originally posted by Jumunji:

Originally posted by The Former:

They won't disclose sales numbers because they only do this during quarterly reports. You'll see it soon, I'm told the quarter closes on the 31st.

no they tweeted at 500 000 sales for every other title so why have they yet to do it for shadows ? only logical answer is they havent even sold 500 000 copies

This would mean that no less than 1.5 million players subbed to Ubisoft+ just for this game. That would mean that they made $26 million on Ubisoft+ this month alone, much of it this week, which would be equal to a quarter of their monthly revenue according to last month's figures.

I feel like if that kind of spike happened, Ubisoft+ would be making headlines.

Also, can you find me one of these tweets? The research I've done since reading this suggests they never do this, but I'm not on Twitter directly so maybe you can find something I can't.

[helterskelter]

Originally posted by Jumunji:

Originally posted by helterskelter:

That's ludicrous. The've definitely sold over 500k copies.

I hate this game too, as a vietnamese american, but bro...let's not spread actual propaganda here.

so why is there no tweet showing that they have sold 500 000 copies and only tweets of player counts lol.. when they have tweeted the 500 000 milestone previously

Marketing tactics dictate that once they've gone with player counts, they can't go back to the "lower" numbers of hard copies sold

The "optimist" (I want this game to underperform so the industry is taught a lesson about anti-asian racism) in me wants to believe that they reached 1 million players before 500k hard copies sold, which...would imply that the ratio at the moment is close to or even less than 50%...implying they sold less than 1 million in their first three days...but that's quite a low confidence statement.

[The Former]

Originally posted by Jumunji:

Originally posted by The Former:

This would mean that no less than 1.5 million players subbed to Ubisoft+ just for this game. That would mean that they made $26 million on Ubisoft+ this month alone, much of it this week, which would be equal to a quarter of their monthly revenue according to last month's figures.

I feel like if that kind of spike happened, Ubisoft+ would be making headlines.

yes but we got nothing at all to do with sales they have only tweeted player counts which we all know doesnt really mean much other than 2 million people turned the game on ...so again if they are doing so well why arent they showing it

Can you find me those tweets? (I updated my other post with this question but it got buried by a page transfer lol.)

[helterskelter]

Originally posted by Jumunji:

Originally posted by helterskelter:

Marketing tactics dictate that once they've gone with player counts, they can't go back to the "lower" numbers of hard copies sold

The "optimist" (I want this game to fail so the industry is taught a lesson about anti-asian racism) in me wants to believe that they reached 1 million players before 500k hard copies sold, which...would imply that the ratio at the moment is close to or even less than 50%...implying they sold less than 1 million in their first three days...but that's quite a low confidence statement.

agree but the question is why did they decide to tweet player counts instead sales the stat everyone wants to see ... ubisoft chose player count over sales because player count was the better number and from what we have seen makes many without critical thinking think that the tweeted played count shows a success

I don't know but I gave an "optimistic" guess. Probably subscription players are more frontloaded than outright sales at the beginning of the game's launch so they reached 1 million players before they reached 500k copies sold.

[Darkrayne]

Just want to point out.. everyone is ignoring that there is a cash shop. No idea how that might factor in because I don't follow average spending for that kind of thing but it's probably significant.