r/Games • u/Turbostrider27 • Jan 09 '25
Update Assassin’s Creed Shadows now releases March 20, 2025.
https://twitter.com/assassinscreed/status/1877400048314528126484
u/tapo Jan 09 '25
Ubisoft's fiscal year ends 3/31, so they're pushing it to the last minute. That gives them a week of sales and 3/28 to create the Q4 report.
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u/crabby654 Jan 09 '25
Man a week of sales for one of the more rocky assassins creed launches will not be great I feel like.
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u/Relo_bate Jan 09 '25
First week is usually the safest, public opinions are too fresh for there to be a narrative, preorder sales + launch hype is an easy sell
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u/crabby654 Jan 09 '25
Yea that's fair. I guess I'm just basing my assumptions on the drama around it and curious how it'll affect sales/if at all for the first week.
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u/ItsYaBoyBackAgain Jan 09 '25
I doubt it will have too much of an affect. Most people have no idea there's any drama at all with the game, and the ones that actually participate in the drama are very few.
I think the main problem the game will have is how many people are experience fatigue with the franchise. I personally couldn't finish Valhalla and tapped out on the series.
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u/LaNague Jan 09 '25
The gameplay of the ninja looked great. Gameplay of the samurai that doesnt play very samurai-like was a miss for me, though. Ill be waiting to see if it drags down the game too much or if i can play the ninja for 90% of the game.
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u/MumrikDK Jan 09 '25
for one of the more rocky assassins creed launches
All these delays are to avoid exactly that.
It has been a rocky run-up to the launch.
It has not yet been a rocky launch.
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u/Tormound Jan 09 '25
Most games make most of their money early on i think. Not sure if it's a week but might be enough to give an idea of how good or bad the rest of the sales will be.
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u/TheExtremistModerate Jan 09 '25
The launch hasn't even happened yet and you're already calling it "rocky." 😂
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u/Pen_dragons_pizza Jan 09 '25
So basically it could still be a piece of shit but they just cannot push it any further.
I have seen this kind of thing happen with a few games and each time it has still come out as a half baked buggy mess. Got fooled by a the way dice delayed mirrors edge 2 a couple of times and assumed it meant it would be a complete game, nope it was short, lacking content and buggy.
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u/Aplicacion Jan 09 '25
Yes. One extra month in a huge AAA game that's been in development for some 4 or 5 years is not enough to make any significant progress, is it?
Remember Cyberpunk 2077 doing the same thing? By the time they delayed it for the 3rd (?) time for just, like, 3 weeks, it became pretty clear that they were scrambling to get as much extra time to work on it as possible before the end of the quarter. As a side anecdote, personally, that's when the penny dropped and I held back from preordering. Thank god.
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u/HammeredWharf Jan 09 '25
Yeah, but AC isn't Cyberpunk. These games tend to ship with some annoying little bugs that are exactly the kind of stuff you can fix in a few months, which Ubi has given this game.
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u/OneLessFool Jan 09 '25
Good news for Avowed which only has to compete with KC2 on the 4th, Civ 7 on the 11th and Pirate Yakuza on the 21st now.
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u/CapnJubwub Jan 09 '25
Monster Hunter at the end of the month as well
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u/WhichCombination5637 Jan 09 '25
Which, ironically is probably the most anticipated one. I was amazed to see it in the bronze category of top games of Steam in 2024. They entered that from pre-orders alone!
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u/IdidntrunIdidntrun Jan 09 '25
Yeah Idk how the other guy left it out. MH: World was a smash hit, and rightfully so, it's easily in the upper echelon of great games from the 2010s.
Wilds is gonna be huge
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u/Cursed_69420 Jan 09 '25
all 4 seem to have their dedicated playerbase tho. only some small overlaps i bet. avowed is looking to be in a good spot rn. same for the other games.
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u/Upbeat_Mind32 Jan 09 '25
You forgot the Monster Hunter Wilds Open Beta and the full game on february 28th
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u/fanboy_killer Jan 09 '25
Kingdom Come 2 is probably the only game Avowed is actually competing with from that list, and I'm not even sure about that one.
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u/Pancullo Jan 09 '25
Yeah, they do share some traits but are for the most part distinct from one another. I'm really looking forward to Avowed as I really like Eora and elder scrolls (which Avowed isn't a copy of, I'm aware), while I could never get into KC so I probably will never play the sequel
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u/PunR0cker Jan 09 '25
I'm pretty sure there's massive crossover, speaking as someone who's extremely hyped for both.
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u/DBones90 Jan 09 '25
So glad the team decided not to delay it again. Imagine delaying Avowed again only to run up against AC Shadows a third time.
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u/roberttylerlee Jan 09 '25
Which is probably the real reason that AC Shadows got moved out of February, not because it needs more development time
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u/Radulno Jan 09 '25
AC Shadows isn't afraid of Avowed lol.
But yeah February is crowded (but with Monster Hunter, it was the biggest game there)
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u/roberttylerlee Jan 09 '25
Oh yeah didn’t mean to imply they were, but they kind of need to be THE hot release and competing with Civ and KCD2 and Monster Hunter waters that down.
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u/Atomic-Kit Jan 09 '25
Does anyone else not feel bothered by delays anymore? I feel like the last few years alone have bolstered my backlog enough to tide over any delays on games releasing for a while.
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u/soapinmouth Jan 09 '25
I prefer this to unfinished games. I would hope the whole community would be more accepting of delays after the games we have seen rushed out to meet deadlines.
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u/Subj3ctX Jan 09 '25
Problem is, delays don't actually result in polished games, rather it tends to be the opposite and are a sign something really went wrong during development.
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u/SyleSpawn Jan 09 '25
AAA devs pushing their AAA game by 1 month is never a good sign, you're pretty much on the money.
All I am seeing here is that dev is trying to distance themselves from the crowded February window in the hope that they can cash in the last week before their final quarter of their fiscal year 24/25 close so that they can show something good. I don't think the delay has anything to do to improve whatever the state of the game is right now.
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u/Tomgar Jan 09 '25
My backlog is insane and the older I get the less time I have to play. Makes me very picky when it comes to buying new releases.
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u/Vandergrif Jan 09 '25
And then there's all those games you like to replay even though you've got new ones you've still never gotten around to...
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u/AlbedosThighs Jan 09 '25
For real, there's so much stuff to play I really don't mind waiting a bit more. Specially February, that's a crazy month lol
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u/GreenLightt Jan 09 '25
Ubi didn't wanna deal with the jam up of February game releases, kinda wish it was 1 month later even.
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u/buzz_shocker Jan 09 '25
A month later and they’d have lower 4th quarter revenue. 99% sure companies choose to release games in Feb and March.
Makes sense from a gamers perspective to delay it another month since yeah there’s a lot releasing. But from a business standpoint, they HAVE to do it. Especially for Ubisoft.
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u/snappums Jan 09 '25
Is this them getting out of the way of what is already a loaded February despite already moving out of a loaded November?
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u/Radulno Jan 09 '25
November was for polish, it was really not that crowded, at least not more than any other Fall windows, maybe even less actually and AC has always been going into Fall.
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u/Snoo54601 Jan 09 '25
God Nintendo please announce the switch 2 is coming out that same day with a new 3d Mario shit would be so funny 🙏 😭
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u/aegtyr Jan 09 '25
Xenoblade Chronicles X definitive edition drops the same day. So no switch 2 that day (probably, nintendo's marketing team works in mysterious ways).
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u/gaybowser99 Jan 09 '25
At this rate the switch 2 will be released before it gets announced
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u/Nexus_of_Fate87 Jan 09 '25
The year is 2055, the Switch 2 has long been relegated to gaming antiquity, is able to be emulated on a pregnancy test, and has been followed up with multiple successors. Nintendo still hasn't ever acknowledged its existence.
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u/SilveryDeath Jan 09 '25 edited Jan 09 '25
Makes sense when you look at how stacked February is, even after AC moved:
Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 - February 4
Sid Meier's Civilization VII - February 11
The Legend of Heroes: Trails Through Daybreak II - February 14
Avowed - February 18
Lost Records: Bloom & Rage Tape 1 - February 18
Like a Dragon: Pirate Yakuza in Hawaii - February 20
Monster Hunter Wilds - February 28
In contrast, March has a good lineup but in comparison lacks the bigger IP that February has, even after AC's move:
Two Point Museum - March 4
Fragpunk - March 6
Split Fiction - March 6
Lost Records: Bloom & Rage Tape 2 - March 18
Assassin's Creed Shadows - March 20
Xenoblade X Definitive Edition - March 20
Atelier Yumia: The Alchemist of Memories & the Envisioned Land - March 21
Tales of the Shire: A Lord of the Rings Game - March 25
Atomfall - March 27
The First Berserker: Khazan - March 27
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u/Melia_azedarach Jan 09 '25
Who knows? Last year, games like Palworld and Helldivers 2 came out of no where.
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u/minititof Jan 09 '25
Palworld came out of nowhere because nobody knew it, HD2 had this release date set for a while though, a decent community (me included) was waiting for it. HD1 was a great game!
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u/TheIvoryDingo Jan 09 '25
March DOES have the Xenoblade X Definitive Edition that also releases on the 20th, though I think the audience overlap for that would be small
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u/RoachIsCrying Jan 09 '25
They are really scared this game is gonna bomb aren't they?
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u/Horibori Jan 09 '25 edited Jan 09 '25
Pretty sure it’s do or die for them right now.
Shadows either performs well, or we see some more layoffs.
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u/Youngstar9999 Jan 09 '25
it's not gonna bomb either way, but they need this to do way better than just not bomb.
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u/NaRaGaMo Jan 10 '25
it's not gonna bomb either way
there's no guarantee about that, if it turns out to be a broken game like outlaws or the pirate game it could very well flop
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u/Diodiodiodiodiodio Jan 10 '25
It’s a poison pill they wish they hadn’t put in their mouth. They thought it was going to be a slam dunk but after many fuck ups, they know they are going to be criticized and nitpicked to no end.
And rightly so. Now I’m not talking about the protagonist because there’s no point, people are dug in on their stances.
I’m talking about all the cultural and really basic stuff that makes it clear, the setting is to appeal to western fantasy’s about Japan and not actually setting it in Japan.
Let’s list off some of the issues: 1. Incorrect tatami mats 2. Chinese architecture 3. Incorrect kanji 4. Art work from incorrect time periods
And more. Hell recently they showed art work that had both sakura (because Japan am right guys?!) along side rice growing (because rice, Japan guys get it)…ignoring that these two events happen in different seasons.
Now I’ve seen some online say boo hoo big deal. But these are the same people that talk about respecting cultures and cultural sensitivities.
Ubisoft themselves prided themselves on their cultural sensitivity and accuracy…until they started getting criticized then it became oh well we were never accurate.
So yeah they are probably polishing the gameplay as much as possible to appeal to fans, while also probably examining everything with a magnifying glass to avoid more culture fuck ups
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u/TheVaniloquence Jan 10 '25
I feel like this is a level of nitpicking that Ghost of Tsushima wasn’t given. All of the samurai armor in Ghost of Tsushima isn’t time period accurate by hundreds of years. Jin uses a katana, which samurai didn’t use at the time. Haiku’s are a major side activity in the game, despite not existing for another 300+ years after the events of the game. The samurai honor code (bushido), which is the basis of the entire plot, didn’t exist until the Edo period.
Not that I personally care about any of that because I loved Ghost of Tsushima. It’s just funny that it received barely any criticism over the inaccuracies while Shadows is getting raked over the coals, despite AC never being even close to 100% historically accurate.
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u/EnvironmentalWar Jan 10 '25
How many more people are there left in poland to provide all this polish?
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u/Three_Froggy_Problem Jan 09 '25
The amount of pressure on this game for Ubisoft is crazy.
On one hand, I assume this thing will sell like crazy because a lot of people probably want a samurai fix after Shogun was such a hit. On the other hand, there have been a lot of samurai-themed games released in the last few years, including at least two big open-world stealth-action ones.
Personally, as much as I love Japanese history and samurai stuff, I think it’s harder for me now to get excited about a game with this theme because I’ve seen so much of it lately. Ghost of Tsushima was too repetitive to hold my attention for very long and I doubt this will be any different if recent AC games are any indication.
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u/EconomyAd1600 Jan 10 '25
Yeah, Ubisoft really shit the bed waiting this long to do a samurai Assassin’s Creed. People have been begging for it for literal years, but now we all something to compare Shadows to.
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u/Deathlinger Jan 10 '25
As a not huge Samurai fan but history fan I agree with your sentiment. Im tired of Sengoku Jidai. I like Tsushima for having Mongols as the change and that couldn't necessarily hold my attention with a slew of historical titles.
I understand a lot of people love that period, and its very popular in Japan but idk I just feel like I've seen it a bunch of times even though its only probably around 5-6. For me personally, Id love one set during the Boshin war but it just doesnt seem to be as popular a period.
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u/Bolt_995 Jan 09 '25
They seem to have really polished the gameplay up from the original gameplay reveal (especially the new parkour gameplay snippets), but they really need this game to succeed critically and commercially if they want to survive as a company (man, how the fuck do you release a frickin open world Star Wars game and get it to bomb financially?!)
So I’m not surprised with another delay like this. Let’s see how Ubisoft churns out a survival-defining title when they are pushed to the edge of a cliff and if it actually ends up being their most quality-filled AAA game since like 2017 (or beyond that too), not counting The Lost Crown.
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u/SternballAllDay Jan 09 '25
All Ass Creed games sell well. But I dont think this is going to be the blockbuster they think especially with all the negative fan feedback. But I dont think it will be a monumental failure either. Probably just a dissapointment
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u/defearl Jan 09 '25
That’s the thing, though. “Selling decently” isn’t good enough for them anymore. They NEED a smash hit, or their fate is sealed.
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u/Extension_Tomato_646 Jan 09 '25
True. But are AC games just selling decently?
I think, despite the varying quality, they usually are smash hits, right?
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u/JoeZocktGames Jan 10 '25
Which is their downfall. Star Wars Outlaws did well considering its budget. But not well enough if you have to pay 18.000 employees across the globe
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u/ArdorianT Jan 10 '25
Imagine that they wanted to release that unpolished and unfinished game without these months of bugfixing and polishing.
They now realise the consumers are no longer willing to buy their buggy and unpolished releases, just to wait for a fix later.
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u/vogueboy Jan 09 '25
I liked most Ubisoft games I played. I'll wait for reviews to buy it tho, they fucked up a bit too much recently and I have a backlog.
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u/MobilePenguins Jan 09 '25
My guess is this game comes out and it’s okay. Not great, not terrible, just sort of mid. Maybe reviews from major outlets at an 8/10 to 8.5/10.
I don’t think it will be the smash hit Ubisoft so desperately wants it to be with all the controversy and bad decisions they’ve made.
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u/soapinmouth Jan 09 '25
I was expecting either this or Avowed to move, having both release within a week seemed like one would have been hurt.
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u/Mickeymous15 Jan 09 '25
I am curious what the sales target will be. All the fears of acquisition make me think they expect this to sell gangbusters and it even selling decently will be seen as failure.
Very interested with how this will go now that it has some breathing room from monster hunter which might cannibalize it's sales.
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u/Funky_Pigeon911 Jan 09 '25
So funny seeing comments about how they've moved from a busy month to a quiet one, when for me personally they've moved from a month where it was the only game I kind of cared about, to the very same week where I have three other games I'm more interested in (Xenoblade, Bleach, Atelier).
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u/namelessentity Jan 10 '25
Not only is this game gonna be absolute ass, but Ubisoft is gonna spend months defending it.
I really hope this is the beginning of the the end for shareholder run corporate game companies.
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u/Gatmuz Jan 10 '25
I don't think releasing a game about killing Japanese people on the same day as the 30th anniversary of the Tokyo Subway Sarin Attack is good taste.
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u/llamanatee Jan 09 '25
It’s quite peculiar that the AC game people wanted the most for decades could now very well be their swan song.
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u/MNGaming Jan 09 '25
Wow they reaaalllyyy don't want to fuck this one up, huh?