Watch Dogs 2 has got off to an atrocious start, selling some 300,000 units less than its predecessor at launch in the UK alone. So bad are the numbers that they've prompted publisher Ubisoft to comment, with the firm wagging its tail in the direction of the release's critical response as evidence that it may yet enjoy long-term success.
"It is true that first-day and first-week sales for a number of big games, including Watch Dogs 2 and titles from our competitors, are comparatively lower than previous versions in previous years," a spokesperson said. "However, we expect both week two and week three sales to be above traditional sales patterns. There is a trend toward games, especially high-quality games, having stronger and longer 'tails'."
The company concluded that it ultimately anticipates "millions" will end up enjoying Marcus Holloway's hack happy adventure. We agree with the organisation – especially when the price of entry drops to $19.99 over the Christmas holidays, right?
[source eurogamer.net]
Comments 14
This is a great game and better in a lot of ways than Watch Dogs. I do hope sales pick up I got it day one and have no regrets. I would like this series to get more sequels in the future. If people wait till it discounts down or get it 2nd hand later on then the chances of a sequel are very slim. People critise Ubisoft for their games but they really listened to feedback after the first game so should be congratulated for that.
@dryrain
Agreed. This isn't the leap over Watch Dogs 1 that Assassin's Creed 2 was over the original but it's still a big improvement. Unfortunately Ubisoft has pulled a lot of bs in the past and I think people have gotten sick of it and are striking back. I can't blame them, it's just too bad it probably means we won't see a new game in the series, at least not for a very long time. Either that or they'll go the obnoxious episodic route SquareEnix did with the new Hitman game.
it does have to compete for wallet-share with psvr, ps4 Pro, ffxv, a bunch of franchise shooters, and even tomb raider, and even more preorders like nioh, horizon zd, etc. Hard to stand out in that crowd.
I'm hoping this is why hellblade appears delayed.
Maybe people just waiting for the goty special edition with all the dlc, people see there are multiple sku and decided to just wait for the complete edition with cheaper price in a couple of month. The game look fun thought.
I think they look at GTA 5 being in the top 10 for 100 years (ok a slight exaggeration) and want a piece of that long-tail pie. They even create a game which is basically the same to do it!
It's a fun game though and clearly a lot of hard work went into it so I hope it does sell well...
"especially when the price of entry drops to $19.99 over the Christmas holidays, right?"
I think that has something good to do with, Ubi games and Lego games always drop in price very quickly. Even Ratchet and Clank, which only released at $40, was $20 soon after that.
Also, was anybody clamoring for a new W_D game? The first wasn't that long ago. I know some yearly games do well, but not all games need to be annuals. GTA, MGS, FF, Uncharted, God of War, sometimes it's better to have a few years between games. Maybe not as many years as Half-Life, but maybe next year this might gave done better. Or the year after that.
Well, I hope that it'll be steak for dinner when I get home, but I saw a lasagna defrosting on the worktop this morning before I left for the office, so I guess we don't always get what we want, do we, Ubisoft?
the insurmountable problem for me is that i just can't get passed the characters, and that's solely based on all the trailers. that may be rather harsh, in which case ubisoft really should have made more carefully considered trailers, where the lead doesn't come across as an ar*ewipe. not even knocking £35 off the asking the price would fix that for me.
i played ubisoft's steep open beta, and that's going to bomb hard too in my opinion. it took an hour for me to download the 24gb(!!) required to play it, and about 15 minutes later it was deleted.
Once word of mouth spreads, the multiplayer is fixed and the game is a bit cheaper sales will certainly improve.
@rjejr I was. Not because the first game was so good, but just because the series does have potential. It's good to see it getting the sequel it deserves.
@Kidfried Here's the thing, the game still sold, so I know there were people who did want it. But if you spend enough time with gamers the one unifying factor is backlog. Everybody buys more games than they have time to play. So let's just pull some numbers out of the air, 1 million people buy Watch Dogs when it releases or goes on a sale, but only 750k actually get to play it, the rest sit unopened. When WD2 releases so soon, those 250k people who bought the original but haven't played it yet probably aren't going to buy the sequel day 1. Online games get bought annually and gamers play then Day 1 b/c they have too before the next installment releases, but for a single player focused game like WD, it sits on the pile. 2 or 3 years later when a sequel releases people have played the first and look forward to the sequel. I think some gamers need 2 to 3 years between single player story driven games. Not everybody, but enough that sequel sales slump.
OK, so what does 300k less actually mean? If a game sells millions but 300k less this is still good. If it sells 100k then yeah, another matter entirely.
If this game isn't a HUGE improvement over the first terrible game then this game sux, yes WD1 was that bad.
@finalstan WD1 sold -425K at launch (UK). It's down well over 300K on that. it's frankly a spectacular decline.
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