Sales Update: 3 Million Players

[Smooth_Merc]

From Ubisoft FB Account:

🔥 OVER 3 MILLION PLAYERS FOR AC SHADOWS! 🔥

✅2nd highest Day 1 sales revenue in Assassin's Creed franchise history.
✅Biggest Ubisoft Day 1 ever on PlayStation Digital Store.
✅Best community ever, with over 40 Million hours already played.

Justice is forged in the Shadows. 🦅

Source: https://www.facebook.com/share/p/1ABWU3Kvmo/?mibextid=wwXIfr

[bshock]

Ursprünglich geschrieben von Ele:

They had a $500M budget (including marketing), with the game priced at $70 per copy. Subscriptions bring in $18 per player, and platform cuts (Steam & consoles) take 30% of sales revenue.

To break even, they’d need to generate $500M in revenue, meaning they’d have to sell around 7.14M full-price copies ($70 * 0.7 = $49 per copy after platform cuts).

Since subscriptions bring in $18 per player (after platform cuts: $18 * 0.7 = $12.6 per subscription), they’d need about 39.7M subscriptions to reach $500M almost 40M subscribers.

Being generous, if 2M were full-price copies sold and 1M came from subscriptions, that would put them at:

$98M from copies (2M * $49)

$12.6M from subscriptions (1M * $12.6)

Total: $110.6M / $500M, or just 22% of the way to breaking even.

All of this is undone by your very first sentence. So called experts speculate the budget was between $250-350 million but we don't know for sure. Pulling 500M out of your ass just doesn't make sense.

[AG2590]

Ursprünglich geschrieben von Smooth_Merc:

From Ubisoft FB Account:

🔥 OVER 3 MILLION PLAYERS FOR AC SHADOWS! 🔥

✅2nd highest Day 1 sales revenue in Assassin's Creed franchise history.
✅Biggest Ubisoft Day 1 ever on PlayStation Digital Store.
✅Best community ever, with over 40 Million hours already played.

Justice is forged in the Shadows. 🦅

Source: https://www.facebook.com/share/p/1ABWU3Kvmo/?mibextid=wwXIfr

Players do not mean sales
2nd highest day 1 meaning behind AC Valhalla which sold poorly initially
Irrelevant.

AC Shadows is doomed, as is Ubisoft. Veilguard sold better and peaked higher.

[Ele]

Ursprünglich geschrieben von bshock:

Ursprünglich geschrieben von Ele:

They had a $500M budget (including marketing), with the game priced at $70 per copy. Subscriptions bring in $18 per player, and platform cuts (Steam & consoles) take 30% of sales revenue.

To break even, they’d need to generate $500M in revenue, meaning they’d have to sell around 7.14M full-price copies ($70 * 0.7 = $49 per copy after platform cuts).

Since subscriptions bring in $18 per player (after platform cuts: $18 * 0.7 = $12.6 per subscription), they’d need about 39.7M subscriptions to reach $500M almost 40M subscribers.

Being generous, if 2M were full-price copies sold and 1M came from subscriptions, that would put them at:

$98M from copies (2M * $49)

$12.6M from subscriptions (1M * $12.6)

Total: $110.6M / $500M, or just 22% of the way to breaking even.

All of this is undone by your very first sentence. So called experts speculate the budget was between $250-350 million but we don't know for sure. Pulling 500M out of your ass just doesn't make sense.

I said the budget and marketing ads are not free; they can represent up to 100% of the total game budget.

[AdahnGorion]

Ursprünglich geschrieben von Ele:

They had a $500M budget (including marketing), with the game priced at $70 per copy. Subscriptions bring in $18 per player, and platform cuts (Steam & consoles) take 30% of standard sales revenue.

To break even, they’d need to generate $500M in revenue, meaning they’d have to sell around 7.14M full-price copies ($70 * 0.7 = $49 per copy after platform cuts).

Since subscriptions bring in $18 per player, they’d need about 27.8M subscriptions to reach $500M, almost 28M subscribers.

Being generous, if 2M were full-price copies and 1M came from subscriptions, that would put them at:

$98M from copies (2M * $49)

$18M from subscriptions (1M * $18)
Total: $116M / $500M, or just 23.2% of the way to breaking even.

Edit: Removed the 30% cut from their own subscriptions, that adds 1.2% progress.

Incorrect.

This game is not $70 for most people.
30% of sales are in China and the price there is $42
Even in Scandinavian countries the game cost only just above $60

So what you need to look at is gross revenue data that is public. We can´t pull out proper estimations without taking into account all the different regional prices.
When we have the gross revenue, like with steam. You need to take away the 30% cut + 5% taxes.

Then you can start to take away at the overall development cost. So you would need closer to 800m to even break even, in your example, than 500m.

You also can´t attribute all gross revenue from Ubi+ to a singular game, just as Netflix will not attribute all gross revenue to the Crown....(a singular show)
Its a catalogue service, so you split evenly among games..

[Corona Scurrae]

Ursprünglich geschrieben von AG2590:

Ursprünglich geschrieben von Smooth_Merc:

From Ubisoft FB Account:

🔥 OVER 3 MILLION PLAYERS FOR AC SHADOWS! 🔥

✅2nd highest Day 1 sales revenue in Assassin's Creed franchise history.
✅Biggest Ubisoft Day 1 ever on PlayStation Digital Store.
✅Best community ever, with over 40 Million hours already played.

Justice is forged in the Shadows. 🦅

Source: https://www.facebook.com/share/p/1ABWU3Kvmo/?mibextid=wwXIfr

Players do not mean sales
2nd highest day 1 meaning behind AC Valhalla which sold poorly initially
Irrelevant.

AC Shadows is doomed, as is Ubisoft. Veilguard sold better and peaked higher.

Additionally Valhalla was completely ignored with its many glaring issues because of some infamous Polish hacks releasing the biggest joke in gaming history. A lot of people refunded and bought Valhalla instead because there was nothing available

[Weltall8000]

Yeah, 2nd highest day 1 revenue, behind Valhalla.

[Ryu]

Ursprünglich geschrieben von AG2590:

Players do not mean sales
2nd highest day 1 meaning behind AC Valhalla which sold poorly initially
Irrelevant.

AC Shadows is doomed, as is Ubisoft. Veilguard sold better and peaked higher.

Valhalla sold poorly initially? Ubisoft literally stated it had the biggest launch in series history. I swear you guys are getting more and more delusional. lmao

[Doc Robotnik]

Ursprünglich geschrieben von Ryu:

Ursprünglich geschrieben von AG2590:

Players do not mean sales
2nd highest day 1 meaning behind AC Valhalla which sold poorly initially
Irrelevant.

AC Shadows is doomed, as is Ubisoft. Veilguard sold better and peaked higher.

Valhalla sold poorly initially? Ubisoft literally stated it had the biggest launch in series history. I swear you guys are getting more and more delusional. lmao

Indeed, it doubled Odyssey's launch sales and grossed over $1bn in total, with over 20 players.

Odyssey alone was estimated to have grossed $414m by 2020, so significantly more than that by now, selling over 10m copies, and Shadows is outpacing that game's sales AND REVENUE already, with a bigger console launch than Valhalla on PlayStation, so I honestly don't know what people are confused by.

Regardless of whether one game can change the fortunes of a publisher under fire, Shadows is well on its way to becoming a success in its own right.

[Mr. Death]

Ursprünglich geschrieben von bshock:

It's been out a week. 3 million players. Doesn't matter about copies sold. Revenue matters and they are stacking it up. It's not like the game is going to disappear in a few weeks. Sales will continue to pour in, making it a huge success further.

Ill bet you 10k Ubisoft loses 10s of millions if not hundreds of millions and they are forced to downsize and get bought out.

[Tiasmoon]

Ursprünglich geschrieben von bshock:

All of this is undone by your very first sentence. So called experts speculate the budget was between $250-350 million but we don't know for sure. Pulling 500M out of your ass just doesn't make sense.

Different people run different numbers and cals because they have access to different information and typically also a different degree of understanding of the subject, and come to different conclusions. Both estimates however are reasonable given the context.

I assume you dont ever make calculations like these yourself, or you'd already know that.

[Slothering]

Sales?

[Ele]

Ursprünglich geschrieben von AdahnGorion:

Ursprünglich geschrieben von Ele:

They had a $500M budget (including marketing), with the game priced at $70 per copy. Subscriptions bring in $18 per player, and platform cuts (Steam & consoles) take 30% of standard sales revenue.

To break even, they’d need to generate $500M in revenue, meaning they’d have to sell around 7.14M full-price copies ($70 * 0.7 = $49 per copy after platform cuts).

Since subscriptions bring in $18 per player, they’d need about 27.8M subscriptions to reach $500M, almost 28M subscribers.

Being generous, if 2M were full-price copies and 1M came from subscriptions, that would put them at:

$98M from copies (2M * $49)

$18M from subscriptions (1M * $18)
Total: $116M / $500M, or just 23.2% of the way to breaking even.

Edit: Removed the 30% cut from their own subscriptions, that adds 1.2% progress.

Incorrect.

This game is not $70 for most people.
30% of sales are in China and the price there is $42
Even in Scandinavian countries the game cost only just above $60

So what you need to look at is gross revenue data that is public. We can´t pull out proper estimations without taking into account all the different regional prices.
When we have the gross revenue, like with steam. You need to take away the 30% cut + 5% taxes.

Then you can start to take away at the overall development cost. So you would need closer to 800m to even break even, in your example, than 500m.

You also can´t attribute all gross revenue from Ubi+ to a singular game, just as Netflix will not attribute all gross revenue to the Crown....(a singular show)
Its a catalogue service, so you split evenly among games..

I tried to be as generous as possible in my estimation:

- I used the highest price per copy possible around the world(?): $70.
- I assumed that 2M out of the 3M "players" were actual copies sold.
- I also assumed that the 1M subscription players were new subscriptions made specifically for Shadows.

And yes, I'm aware my estimation is very optimistic. It can only be worse than what I said.

Anything lower than my generous estimation of 23% of the way to breaking even would make the situation even worse.

[Roy]

Ursprünglich geschrieben von Mr. Death:

Ursprünglich geschrieben von bshock:

It's been out a week. 3 million players. Doesn't matter about copies sold. Revenue matters and they are stacking it up. It's not like the game is going to disappear in a few weeks. Sales will continue to pour in, making it a huge success further.

Ill bet you 10k Ubisoft loses 10s of millions if not hundreds of millions and they are forced to downsize and get bought out.

They'd be bought by Tencent and injected with $200M

[Mysticalmaid]

Ursprünglich geschrieben von casdarius:

is the game on gamepass? because i very highly doubt that theyve sold 3m copies... which is still 5m short of breaking even on their dev costs alone.

It's not on gamepass, I checked, I would have used my free gamepass month to resub.

[Tiasmoon]

If they had released it on gamepass the game would have done even worse since a lot more people have gamepass.