Ubisoft is pretty good at launching new intellectual properties, you have to grant them that. They did it spectacularly with Assassin’s Creed last generation and with Watch Dogs? All signs point to it being another massive success.
Ubisoft has just announced that Watch Dogs sold 4 million units in its first week on sale, making it the fastest selling new IP ever.
“With such strong sales momentum and positive feedback from gamers, Watch Dogs has positioned itself as the must-have game of the moment,” said Ubisoft’s senior director of marketing and communications Lucile Bousquet. “We’re really proud of this achievement, and are confident that the Watch Dogs brand has a promising future.”
It almost goes without saying that we should expect sequels. So many sequels. No publisher invests so heavily in a game like Watch Dogs for it to be a singular effort. I wonder: will it join the Call of Duty/Assassin’s Creed annual party, or will we be waiting a couple of years for the next one? Time will no doubt tell.
Comments
17 responses to “Watch Dogs Is The Fastest Selling New IP Ever, Says Ubisoft”
And the most delayed new ip.
Wasn’t it like 6 months late?
I could list you at least 5 other major titles this year which have been delayed by longer.
A six month delay is a minor slip in the games industry.
It was delayed before that i think.
Really? I haven’t played it, but from what I’ve seen written in reviews and articles, the game comes across as mediocre at best. Even watching youtube videos inspires no excitement or interest at all … it looks painfully average. Seems like the sales were attributed to the hype train.
I have, at first I was pretty disappointed, but after sinking about 20-30hrs in I am thoroughly loving it and the more I play it the better it looks. Some of the best rain, explosions and tire smoke effects I’ve ever seen.
Here’s one I prepared earlier….
Agree with this. The story starts to become more exciting the deeper you get. And to be honest, I love gta games but it’s in your face sexual content and sickening violence is a bit too much for me these days. I’m not saying I want a clean game at all! Haha nothing clean about shooting up a city. But I found gta5 had become unecessarily extreme in those areas. Older gta games were fine. This game is SO FAR really good
I agree. The hype made me over exited, but its still a great game.
See this? Q_Q
That there is me buying the game on release day and finding out the hard way that my graphics card is not up to snuff…
I envy you and your damned 20-30hrs of enjoyable gameplay…
thats why I no longer PC
It’s a solid game. Above average, but I think it probably deserves the 6-7’s/10 that is has.
Similar to the first Assassins Creed, I think, this ones more about ‘selling’ the premise of future titles than anything else.
All the reviews have the same issues: Chase missions, meaningless hacking, unlikable character and bad driving. That said, as you guys have pointed out, they all say the story picks up nicely and it’s worth a play just for that, even if it is a little generic.
In all, I think everyone can have fun in it. I just hope Ubisoft see this for what it is and don’t start giving us more ‘half baked’ games with gimmicks that are marketed well just because they sell well (I’m not saying that’s what Watch Dogs is, rather thats what Ubisoft could start knocking out if this were the ‘Darker Timeline.’).
I hope they see this as a potential hit franchise and make the hacking etc more worth while.
Just my 2c.
“I haven’t played it yet” = opinion is moot.
As an idiot who pre-orders a lot of games that he shouldn’t. I think there’s a bubble that’s going to burst on this. You can’t trust game studios to actually deliver. You also can’t trust game review websites. You need to wait until actually players get the games.
Watch Dogs is successful because of the marketing. Which in many cases was for a game different than what we ended up getting. Maxed out on PC it is a pale comparison to the game play videos which were used to build hype.
So many people are getting jaded on pre-ordering and hype.
How many people pre-ordered Titanfall based on hype? How many people actually played that game for any length of time before being disappointed and abandoning it.
DICE / EA put the next Battlefield game on pre-order 6 months after the release of the previous game and before they released a patch designed to fix the single most important issue with the game since release.
Why should anyone give them the benefit of the doubt? Game studios treat consumers like dirt and are all about the pre-order.
EA/ DICE. The only reason they are finally fixing Battlefield 4 is to convince people to pre-order the next game. That’s pathetic.
Same with Call of Duty. I admit the new game looks good, but I will never pre-order after how bad the MP was in MW3 and Ghosts.
Hehe, seems like you kinda solved your own problem there.
I generally won’t pre-order something anymore unless I’m CERTAIN that it’s going to be something good.
Like it’s from a developer I have a lot of faith in or it’s a sequel to a game I loved and want more of.
I haven’t played Watch Dogs yet but it actually got better reviews than I expected it to a week before launch.
There’s no need to pre-order anything more than a day or two before launch and normally by that point you can pick up the warning signs that the hype train is going to come horribly unstuck.
In the case of Watch Dogs I noted the delays to the project, the scaling back of the graphics, Ubisofts previous history of releasing heavily hyped but poorly conceived products (AC 1 and 4) and the review embargo that ran until AFTER the game was out….. and went out a day or two before launch and bought the (already reviewed) Wolfenstein instead.
While it reviewed pretty well in the end it was pretty clear a week out that it was unlikely to be a 90%+ kind of game.
Yeah you have to know. I will most likely pre-order Far Cry 4 as I really enjoyed the last one and I’m sure it’s more of the same.
The new Assassin’s Creed is a tough one. Love the games but found AC3 boring and barely played. I will wait until there’s more out.
You can never be 100% certain.
Even so, I never pre-order, unless there’s some specific preorder bonus that I want, which is very rare. And I *never* have a problem walking into a game store on release day and getting a copy off the shelf.
I think you mean AC 1 and AC3. AC4 was actually really good.
You’re right about never being certain, but there’s some games that I’ll buy because I know that unless they’re an absolutely catastrophic failure I won’t regret spending the money. If they released a new turn-based X-Com or something like that tomorrow I’d buy it in the knowledge that unless someone somehow fundamentally broke the formula that I’m going to enjoy it.
With you on the pre-orders as well. I haven’t had terrible trouble getting hold of a title since the N64 days.
You’re also right about AC4. It was great, I meant AC3.
Flopped