Assassin's Creed Shadows hits 2 million players, putting it on track to be the series' most successful game yet

I thought this was a crippling failure because it was woke or something?
- I'd expect it to be a failure because it's a 70$ ubishit paint-by-numbers, but I'll find out in two years when it's 15$
  
  Yeah, I was utterly shocked at the price. £70 to download or £56 on disk.
  The last Assassins Creed I played was Odyssey and that was well after release so I paid a far more reasonable £30 or so.
- Yeah they put a black samurai in it. Of course the screeching ggamers were screeching about “historical accuracy “….. and then of course there was a story about a black samurai …. So they had to shut up
  
  On the contrary. The word on the conservative circles is how awful the game is and how it doesn't compare.
  I'm serious. They're not shutting up about it (and if you think that's happening you're in a bubble). The actual discussion point is that this game is a failure.
  
  To be fair, yasuke never was a samurai. He was a bodyguard of a jesuit monk (I think?) and was sold to obu nobunaga because he thought he looked "funny". He was a trusted retainer under nobunaga, but never owned land or was a samurai.
  
  Well, considering Japan itself is saying that the game is disrespectful... Looks more like Ubisoft wanted to help themselves to a nice slice of tokenism. Corporations are going to corporate.
- It's a failure because it's trash. The game is honestly laughably bad.
  So I wonder where all the players come from.
  
  Did you play it?
  
  Hard for me to argue, as I never liked any Assassin Creed video game, lol.
  Just reporting on what seems to be said in my circle.

As much as I would be happy for Ubisoft to have a success, they really need one, I just don't trust unverifiable number. I always want to know metrics and data.
Ubisoft can tell us everything. And what does 2 million players really mean? How many of them refunded the game in the 2h at Steam for example? How many are players who, for an hour or two, looked into the game as part of their Ubisoft gamepass equivalent? 2 million players can mean all kind of things. It doesn't say much really about the success.

Kinda surprised it's not terrible tbh. Was expecting them to screw it up somehow.
- Yeah, I’m surprised Ubisoft can make a half decent game.

That's fun, conservative friend of mine told me just this morning about how it was a huge failure with a ridiculous amount of simultaneous players.

Spent all day playing it . It’s great.
Ignore the YouTubers trying to feed off anti Ubisoft vibes. It’s a very beautiful and epic journey, involving slick stealth and very decent combat in Feudal Japan.
Like a juiced Odyssey really, so if that’s your jam, don’t hesitate.
- I have played nearly all AC games until Odyssey then dropping it after about 20h of extremely boring grind just to be able to progress the story. I then decided not to touch these games anymore if they don't change and apparently Valhalla was even worse..? I'm very curious about Shadows but afraid it's the same "pay to progress faster" bullshit. Can you tell me what's it like?
  
  Yeah so Odyssey was my first AC game . I thought it was great, and was happy to roam around Ancient Greece doing bits and pieces.
  Only afterwards did I learn of the disappointment from long terms fans of the franchises
  Shadows is like Odyssey. It’s a big world, with a longish story and lots of side quests - but it’s very west organised and you only do as much as you want.
  It has a broad scope - there are skill trees and levelling up to fit it, but it’s very well done.
  There are bundles of things you can buy to level up faster - I haven’t really checked them out, but not seem essential, plus I have no interest in paying to shorten a game I just spent 70 quid on.
  It’s sounds like it might be too long for your taste. I heard mirage was more focussed but I didn’t play it .
- Is it RPGy like odyssey or is it like the old games where your knife would kill anyone?
  
  They have an option where you can turn on instant kills for assassinations, which for me is a huge game changer. I didn’t mind combat against stronger/weaker enemies based on their levels relative to me, but I always got annoyed at my stealth being meaningless.
  
  It’s very like odyssey.
- Same. I'm really really enjoying it. The parkour as Naoe feels really cool and the atmosphere is just stunning. I am really liking the story so far too.
  My favorite assassins creed was Origins and this one is a big improvement on even that one.
  The amount of hate the game is getting is childish and not even by people who played it really. Like you said, its just a bunch of people feeding off each other.
  If you like assassins creed, personally this is the best one yet. Of you don't like assassins creed, don't play it.
  I think the developers did an amazing job and they should be proud of what they made.
  Are there legit criticism to be has about micro transactions? Absolutely. But aside from that, the game is really good.
  Oh and the music too! Loving the different styles of music they made for different fights.

I got excited after hearing how much people love this one, I usually play every ~5 or so they release and just pick out the best, but sadly the performance was so bad I had to refund it. I have a bit better than the minimum specs on steam (and the minimum specs are a ryzen 5 and gtx 1070, shouldn't this be the standard target?) and ran everything at low, 1080p, and couldn't get past 15fps.
There are better looking games from ~5-10 years ago I can run at 1440p or even 4k 60fps on high settings, I wish game studios would stop trying to go for the most intensive possible graphics effects with how diminished the returns are for it.
- What are you running, I was playing this on my steam deck and it looked really good with a solid 30 fps. I have a B580 in my main pc and have been bumping settings up from medium to a mix of medium high with ambient and specular RT on and I'm still getting 75fps without framegen or upscaling at 1080p. Xess and FG hits 120+. Not bad for a £250 card.
  
  I also play on SteamDeck but it isn’t constant 30 fps at all. Still completely playable without question but I get a lot of drops down to 20 fps as stuff loads in.

If it were doing well, one might think they'd share sales figures instead.
- To clarify, sales figures don't exist anymore because you have to count the people who take a $20 sub to ubisoft to play this instead of buying it.
  
  I realize that, but I find it a worthless stat because the numbers are more easily massaged, which is of course partly the point. A different measurement, which paints a less flattering picture, is concurrent players on Steam. I realize that the game will pull players from other places, but comparing it to other games in the same situation doesn't render favorable results; something which Ubisoft would prefer you didn't know, as is evident by their asking Valve to obfuscate these statistics in the past.
- That is not the standard launch metric in the industry, that comes in quarterly earnings calls. Are you one of the go woke go broke brigade?
  
  I'm part of the "I don't think this game is doing nearly as well as Ubisoft needs it to" "brigade," but thank you very much for slinging baseless accusations.
- Good point.

Ever AC since black flag was terrible in my opinion, with the exception of Valhalla, which was a shit AC, but a damn fun brawler. So I don't put a lot of faith into this one.
- Valhalla was shit too. Raiding a place? Couldn't even kill innocents. Didn't they do any research into vikings? They struck gold with black flag, the rest was all shit and massive bug simulators.
  
  Valhalla combat was very fun. Raiding a place with your viking troop did feel really good.
- Such a basic ass response and let's be honest, black flag? It's not that great, it was just a cool pirate fantasy, shite AC game. AC origins, mirage and unity were infinitely better than black flag as ac games
  
  Ah yes, Unity, the one which was literally unplayable due to all the bugs. I received a free Far Cry game because they were so sorry it was so shit. Origins was ok, except for the bugs, but missed the ships aspect which black flag had and riding through the desert took waaaay to long. Travel times increased with the bigger maps but not the content value. They just add more collectibles, making the games terribly tedious.
  
  Oh yeah, should've said that. AC wasn't a good AC, but a great game, unlike everything that followed it except valhalla.

players, not sales. big difference

Mac users are excited too, it came out day one.
Ubisoft themselves admit it didn’t get the optimization work it needs tho, and that they plan to do further updates.