I don't think this really makes a lick of difference. It's not going to hurt their cash flow from game sales, and during a quarter with the highest returns. Currently the game stands as the highest pre-ordered title at the moment. And most consumers who buy such games aren't the ones to come to gaming websites, read Digital Foundry analysis.
@2Chalupas: (sorry, other thread got locked), you said:
Uhhhh, it's one of their biggest and most important products at this point - and they are also turning it into an "annual franchise". Not stupid at all for the stock to drop when cracks start to show in one of their top franchises. If it dropped like 50% or something I would say yeah, that is an insane over-reaction. But 9%? That seems like a reasonable drop from a game that might damage the reputation of the franchise, or put it's "annual release cash-cow" status is serious jeopardy.
Such damage can change their financial forecasts in the future, and hence the value of the company.
I should point out the series has been an annual series since AC2 onward, AC2 (2009), Brotherhood (2010), Revelations (2011), AC3 & Liberation (2012), AC4 (2013), Unity & Rogue (2014)... hell, this is the second year they'll have two releases. Anyhow, I do think there's evidence of some sort of franchise fatigue in that the unconditional love that allowed gamers to overlook the series obvious flaws is no longer there. I'm not defending the series, hell I've though the series was getting a free pass from AC2 onward. But yeah, a 9% drop is probably an indication of negative attention toward the company and it's product.
Ignoring recent turn of events for the series, I feel the series is likely going to take somewhat of a decline just off the fact that they've been heavily promoting Unity on a smaller userbase on PS4 and XBO, and with no attention going to AC: Rogue I wouldn't be surprised if that didn't sell well at all with all eyes on Unity. Though, I'm sure people and the gaming journalist media will interpret such data that the series popularity is falling off, and conflate that with this recent reaction toward the performance issues. I don't think that'll necessarily be the case, I think it'll be just a natural generational transition issue.
AC2 and AC3 were both 10 million+ sellers, Revelations, Brotherhood, Black Flag are between 7-8 million, it's still been a high selling series but I don't think it's going to be able to sustain those numbers during this generational transition. But, I don't think it's going to be because of this news on the series. Though, it wouldn't surprise me if people interpret sales data that way.
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