168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Assassin’s Creed Shadows is 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:having a really strong launch, defying the expectations of haters who assumed that the series would go broke because it went woke (read: 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:stars a Black samurai). That hasn’t been the case, and the game has already notch🤡ed more than two million players since it launched last week. Time will tell if it can clinch enough success to reverse 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Ubisoft’s downward slide, but the company seems happy with its performance — even if it isn’t matching the highs of 2020’s Valhalla.
“Valhalla launched under extraordinary conditions — in the middle of a global pandemic, withꩲ widespread lockdowns and brand-new console hardware," reads . "It was a perfect storm we may never see again. That's why it's more meaningful to compare Shadows to entries like Origins, Odyssey, and Mirage — games released in more typical cycles. And in that frame, Shadows is already setting a new bar as il🍌lustrated above."
You Don't Have To Defend The Assassin's Creed Shadows Jank
Assassin's Creed Shadows is as wonky as you'd expect a Ubisoft ﷽game to be.
Gaming's Pandemic Boost
If you lived through 2020, you know that it was an anomaly for the world as a whole. It was anomalously bad for other entertainment industries; film and the theater took major financial hits for obvious, social distancing reasons. But the experience of playing video games was unhampered by such things. If anything, It was easier than ever to hop online for some Apex with friends or dump a hundred hours into a ꦇpretty good open-world game. Assassin's Creed Val🐻halla was that pretty good open-world game.
The increased interest in gaming was great for the industry, but it’s best not to attempt to learn wide-ranging lessons from 2020’s overperformance. 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:I’ve written about it before, but the year painted an extremely optimistic picture for the future of live-service games. Online multiplayer games like 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Animal Crossing: New Horizons, Among Us, 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Fall Guys, and 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Phasmophobia all blew up that year thanks to a pandemic and lockdowns that was keeping most people inside. That streak continued into 2021 as Valheim found a huge audience pre-vaccine. But the years since have taught us that there isn’t an endless appetite for live service games. There was justඣ an endless appetite, amid lockdowns, for anything to do to kill t🎀he time.
If that time-killing activity helped you connect with the friends you couldn't see, even better. But it wasn't just multiplayer games. D⛄oom Eternal generated $450 million in revenue within a year of its launch. 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Final Fantasy 7 Remake . 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Ghost of Tsushima was . Animal Crossing: New Horizons, which straddles the line between single-player and multiplayer, was , eventually ꦜaccounting for almost half of the series’ lifetime sales. It was also the . And, as noted, .
2020 Was An "Artificial High"
In those unprecedented times, people were gaming in unprecedented numbers. That success is unreplicable, and it’s smart of Ubisoft to ignore Valhalla’s success when considering Sha🌱dows’ fortunes.
It also seems fairly common. When I chatted with Jackbox CEO Mike Bilder at the 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Game Developers Conference last week, he said something💯 similar about the online party game series’ explosive COVID-era success, and subsequent leveling out. "The same way that gaming declined and the industry declined, we declined and came down from that real h🍸igh. I would argue it's an artificial high, as well," he said. "But in the trajectory of the company, we're still in a growth mode if you normalize for that."
Ubisoft is taking the same approach with Shadows. 2020's infl𝓀ux of players was great for developers in that particular moment. But, in the long-term, it would be a mistake to see that high-water mark as anything other than a historical footnote.
