Assassin’s Creed Shadows Is Becoming One of Ubisoft’s Most Important Releases Ever

Assassin’s Creed Shadows is quietly becoming one of the most important games that publisher Ubisoft has ever released. Generally speaking, the past few years haven’t been great for Ubisoft. When looking at the past year alone, the company has let loose titles like Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora, Skull and Bones, XDefiant, and Star Wars Outlaws, all of which have failed either commercially or critically. With so many consecutive losses on its hands, the need for the latest game in the Assassin’s Creed series to be a success is more vital than ever. 

As of today, Ubisoft saw its stock price tumble by a little more than 7%. In total, Ubisoft’s stock has fallen by nearly 19% in the past month and 40% over the past year to now sit at $2.95 per share. This is the lowest amount that Ubisoft stock has traded for in a decade as it last fell below the $3 threshold in 2014. Things have gotten so bad for the publisher that one investor at AJ Investments urged Ubisoft in an open letter today to restructure and move away from its current management that is claimed to “take advantage” of shareholders. 

With Ubisoft spiraling hard, attention is now being turned toward Assassin’s Creed Shadows, which is set to launch in November. Shadows is the first major game in the Assassin’s Creed series to be released since 2020’s Assassin’s Creed Valhalla and follows last year’s spin-off Assassin’s Creed Mirage. Given how well Valhalla did for Ubisoft, it’s likely that the company has very, very high expectations for Shadows. So much so, in fact, that if it were to miss these projections, it would do more harm to Ubisoft than other games like Star Wars Outlaws, Avatar, or Skull and Bones have. Ubisoft typically can’t afford to whiff on a new Assassin’s Creed game, but Shadows seems to now be ten times more important than normal. 

So can Assassin’s Creed Shadows “save” Ubisoft in the midst of this difficult period? Well, it’s hard to say. History would suggest that regardless of its critical appeal, Shadows will sell quite well as most games in the Assassin’s Creed series tend to do so. That being said, AC Shadows has also been mired in controversy since its reveal, primarily concerning its choice of protagonist in Yasuke. Ubisoft surprisingly responded to this controversy back in July in a message aimed at Assassin’s Creed fans in Japan who were disappointed in these decisions that were made with Shadows. Whether or not this blowback will have any major ramifications on the sales of AC Shadows still isn’t known. 

Assassin’s Creed Shadows is set to release on November 15, 2024, and will come to PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S, and PC. It will later be followed by what’s currently been dubbed “Codename: Hexe“, which is the next Assassin’s Creed installment that should center prominently around the witch trials of the 16th century.