Ubisoft announced today that Assassin’s Creed 4 Black Flag shipped 10 million copies, from it’s release date until December 31st, 2013.
These sales figures were announced as part of Ubisoft’s third quarter 2013-2014 statement, which I will cover in depth in a video tomorrow. As well as announcing the units sold, CEO Yves Guillemot provided some perspective on the numbers to his investors.
He said, “We expect to reach around 11 million by the end of March, a remarkable performance close to the high end of our plan. Pricing was very strong, almost on par with last year’s level. We are extremely proud of this achievement notably in the face of a challenging environment and an exceptionally competitive context.”
Although 10 million games sold is very impressive, as I mentioned in the title, AC 4’s sales are still two million short of the milestone reached by the subpar Assassin’s Creed 3. If you’re wondering, AC 3 reached 12 million sales in the same period, so it’s not even lifetime sales we are talking here.
In all honesty, this isn’t enough of a dip to really matter, but I think AC 3 is actually the cause. AC 4 is probably one of the best games in the series, and would be the best if AC 2 wasn’t so great, so it’s not a matter of gameplay. I think AC 3 burned a lot of people on the series and soured their opinion on it, as it lacked everything that makes AC great: characters, story, and interesting setting.
AC 4 has all that in spades, so I can only hope that future sales see if excelling greatly.
