Assassin's Creed Shadows is Europe's best-selling new game of 2025 so far

[midian182]

In brief: Ubisoft pinned a lot of hopes on Assassin's Creed Shadows. Following the disastrous launch of Star Wars Outlaws, the company was in dire need of a hit, hence why the latest AC was delayed – twice. It appears that the French giant can now breathe a sigh of relief: Shadows is Europe's best-selling new game of 2025 so far, beating the likes of Monster Hunter Wilds, Mario Kart World, and Split Fiction. But it's not the best-selling game overall.

Data shared with The Game Business by GSD, a PC and console game-sales tracking firm, shows that Assassin's Creed Shadows is the best-selling new title of 2025. However, there's emphasis on the "new" part.

While Shadows may have sold more than the brilliant Split Fiction and the very popular Mario Kart World, it's the top game to have been released this year. The best-selling game overall in 2025 so far is EA Sports FC 25, which launched in September 2024.

Shadows was delayed in the wake of Star Wars Outlaws' poor reception, with Ubisoft claiming more time was needed to add extra polish. The company wrote in a letter to investors at the time, "While the game [Shadows] is feature complete, the learnings from the Star Wars Outlaws release led us to provide additional time to further polish the title." In January, Ubisoft issued another delay, pushing the date again, from February 14, 2025 to March 20, 2025. The extra time was apparently intended to incorporate player feedback and ensure a higher-quality Day-1 experience

With another major failure threatening the company's stability, Shadows arrived to generally good reviews from critics, and the response from most gamers has been better than expected (it has a Mostly Positive rating on Steam). I personally think it's pretty good, but certainly not in the same category of something like Split Fiction.

Elsewhere in the report, overall game sales so far this year have declined 6% year-over-year. Digital sales continue to pull even further away from physical – 52 million vs. 19.7 million – though both are down YoY. Almost three quarters of the overall PC and console market is now digital, up 2% compared to a year ago.

While unit sales were down 9% in the first 19 weeks of the year, game spending was down just 2% to 1.33 billion euros ($1.55 billion). This is due to the average selling price (ASP) of games increasing 8%.

Looking at digital only, spending was up 8% as unit sales fell 6% – again, this was due to the games' ASP rising 15%. Physical games' ASP was up just 2% as spending fell 16% and unit sales dropped by 17%.

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Assassin's Creed Shadows is Europe's best-selling new game of 2025 so far

 

[Burty117]

Apart from the absolute lack of numbers, where is Clair Obscur: Expedition 33?

Just to re-cap anyone paying attention:

Assassin's Creed Shadows - sold 2.7 million copies in the first two months (released March)
Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 - sold 3.3 million copies in the first month (released April)

These sales tracking firms I'm fairly certain just give the number 1 spot to whoever pays them the most, probably why they don't give actual numbers.

Ubisoft didn't even want to talk numbers in their earnings call these days, just calling them "interactions" or something equally useless.

 

[Billybobjoey]

Apart from the absolute lack of numbers, where is Clair Obscur: Expedition 33?

Just to re-cap anyone paying attention:

Assassin's Creed Shadows - sold 2.7 million copies in the first two months (released March)
Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 - sold 3.3 million copies in the first month (released April)

These sales tracking firms I'm fairly certain just give the number 1 spot to whoever pays them the most, probably why they don't give actual numbers.

Ubisoft didn't even want to talk numbers in their earnings call these days, just calling them "interactions" or something equally useless.

If I had to guess, Expedition 33 doesn't have the legs that Assassin's Creed does with its name recognition. The latest numbers for E33 I can find from a different source (from Alinea Analytics on substack, take the authenticity on that how you will) up to July 21st is that its sold 1.4 million on PS5 and 2.3 million on steam, no info from Xbox available but it's on game pass so I'd expect the sales there to be negligible.

As you mention, Ubisoft has been cagey with numbers, the same report shows the PS5 sales at 2 million, 650K sales on steam, and then 1.1 million "players" on Xbox due to it being on Ubisoft+, which the subscription can be accessed on Xbox or PC through Ubisoft Connect. I'd be willing to bet there's more sales on Xbox than subscription users, since I'd say most primarily Xbox players aren't going to want to pay for multiple game subscriptions. I'll say 10% are subscription to be generous, so for the sake of the argument ~990K from my uneducated guess sales on Xbox.

With that data, we're looking at ~3.7 Million for E33 and ~3.64 Million for AC Shadows. This isn't factoring in any sales numbers from other PC storefronts like Epic or Ubisoft Connect itself, iirc discount sites usually offer Ubisoft Connect keys for ubisoft games, which would likely just push it over E33. E33 definitely had a strong start, but it seems to have slowed down considerably. AC will continue to sell as discounts pop up especially in retail stores and the average joe has name recognition for AC, but has likely barely or never heard of E33.

It sure doesn't explain E33's absence from this list, but yeah there's no doubt it had an incredible initial run. A lot of the hype around it has died off though, when it comes to these indie darlings that's the norm.

 

[toooooot]

Compared to previous games such as AC Odessey or Valhalla Shadow sales are simply catastrophic.
One excuse is transition from purchase to subscription. But do they all expect to be Netflix of gaming? Xbox and EA have unique advantages, such as being owned by MS and making sports game no one else has licenses for.
Ubisoft is truly the weakest subscription seller.

 

[ScottSoapbox]

“Best selling” is pretty vague compared to actual revenue numbers. It admits it’s counting bundled-to-hardware as sales. Knowing that, it’s probably counting game pass plays as sales as well.

 

[Angga B]

Best selling game in europe, much to the chagrin of the rest of the world, most notably from the japanese =P

 

[Liranan]

“Best selling” is pretty vague compared to actual revenue numbers. It admits it’s counting bundled-to-hardware as sales. Knowing that, it’s probably counting game pass plays as sales as well.

They, most likely, add engagement into those sales numbers.

 

[kira setsu]

The one where the black guy isn't nimble?

meanwhile in valhalla they were wearing f'in wolf and bear pelts and climbing all over the damn place. thx for the insult ubi.

 

[Mr Majestyk]

But is the game any good? Valhalla didn't interest me after Odyssey.