Assassin's Creed Syndicate's First-Week Sales Impacted By Unity's Bugs

As part of Ubisoft's latest earnings report, the publisher revealed some new details about Assassin's Creed Syndicate's launch performance. While specific sales figures were not divulged, Ubisoft said first-week sales were down compared to Assassin's Creed Unity, though second-week sales improved. Ubisoft also explained why that might be.

CFO Alain Martinez said during an earnings call that Syndicate's first-week performance was "clearly" impacted "by what had happened with Assassin's Creed Unity." That game launched in October 2014 and was riddled with bugs and other technical issues at launch. Syndicate's recent release, however, was significantly smoother, which could explain why sales rebounded in the second week.

In addition, CEO Yves Guillemot said reviews for Syndicate were mostly positive, and that word of mouth is acting in the favor of the game. He added that Syndicate's sales trend closely resembles that of Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag, which sold more than 10 million copies by December 31, 2014.

In addition, Guillemot said total playtime in Syndicate is "massively up" compared to Unity. For digital versions of Syndicate, "all key metrics" showed improvement over Unity, Guillemot said.

For more on Syndicate, check out GameSpot's review and what other critics are saying. The game is available now on Xbox One and PS4, with the PC edition coming later this month.