"What downgrade?"

All of those trailers appear to have done the business for Ubisoft, as Watch Dogs has become the fastest selling title in the French firm’s storied history. Just let that sink in for a second: during its first 24 hours on sale, more people have purchased Aiden Pearce’s inaugural escapade than any other game in the publisher’s back catalogue. While the company hasn’t disclosed numbers, it’s safe to assume that the figure’s big.

“I once said that the buzz around Watch Dogs was driven by the incredible passion of our early fans,” creative director Jonathan Morin said on the Ubisoft Blog. “Today we broke the record for the biggest first day sales in Ubisoft history. I can never say it enough: thank you everyone. We love you all for your passion and your creativity.”

Chuffed gaffer Yves Guillemot added: “Watch Dogs is an amazing achievement, and our teams should be proud that the creativity, innovation, and long hours that they invested in making this game are paying off. It’s great to see that so many customers enjoy playing the game, and it shows that Watch Dogs has cracked the code for developing a new blockbuster intellectual property and a thoroughly new-gen experience.”

While the folks over at Ubisoft will undoubtedly be sporting Chicago-sized grins over this news, we suspect that Sony will be secretly pleased, too. Despite launching on multiple formats, the Japanese giant very much backed the game as one of its tentpole PlayStation 4 releases, so it’ll be interesting to see whether it's had an impact on hardware sales as well.

[source blog.ubi.com]