News Summary:
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Yesterday, February 16, Ubisoft announced its third-quarter financial results, with comments from CFO Frédérick Duguet and CEO Yves Guillemot. Both reported that engagement with the Assassin’s Creed franchise increased by 30% in the first nine months of the fiscal year compared to the previous fiscal year.
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Assassin’s Creed has had a record year of engagement, more than two years after the launch of Assassin’s Creed Valhalla.
In short, it set a new record for player engagement with the entire Assassin’s Creed franchise. That’s pretty impressive since Assassin’s Creed hasn’t had a major launch since Valhalla arrived in late 2020, launching on both last- and next-gen platforms as well as PC. This new record shows that Assassin’s Creed Valhalla has had an extremely successful post-launch period. Over the last couple of years, RPGs have seen three major DLC packs, culminating in the Dawn of Ragnarok expansion in 2022. These expansion packs must have made a big impression on gamers and did So the magic of bringing Valhalla veterans back for another spin with the game.
This is great news for Assassin’s Creed in general and means that Assassin’s Creed Mirage, whenever it launches, will be a great start. However, Ubisoft admits that Mirage may indeed be delayed until 2024. The new game was scheduled to launch this year, but Ubisoft’s new financial results presentation titled Launch “in the year 2023-24.”
It could also help that the latest Assassin’s Creed Valhalla storyline update, which came out a few months ago in November 2022, directly sets up the events of Assassin’s Creed Mirage. The latest story update, already made available for free to all Valhalla players, establishes the franchise’s next big entry through Basim, the new game lead set in the Middle East. Additionally, Guillemot points out that Assassin’s Creed’s back catalog is extremely useful for driving engagement. “We know that every time we launch a new game in the franchise, the entire back-end catalog grows tremendously, as does when we launch new content for the franchise,” said Director Ubisoft executive said, giving the impression that Valhalla has motivated players to try older games in the series.
While it’s currently unclear exactly what’s going on with Mirage’s release date, the Assassin’s Creed franchise is having a pretty good time right now.
