While I actually enjoyed it, the rest of the world received a lukewarm response to the release of Star Wars: Desperados . Critical response was decent, with at least some mild interest prior to release, but once released, discussion quickly dried up and people lost interest. It seems that putting Star Wars on a box is no longer appealing.
This idea is backed up by a new report from Insider Gaming’s excellent Grant Taylor-Hill. According to Grant, who presumably got his way into Ubisoft headquarters through some mumbo-jumbo from Sam Fisher, the game only sold 1 million copies in its first month.
Grant went on to say that he couldn’t exactly confirm Ubisoft’s expected sales, but I think it’s safe to say we’re thinking a little over a million.
However, it puts Ubisoft’s recent comments and decisions into some perspective. Last week, the company announced it was delaying the release of Assassin’s Creed: Shadows, in part because it wanted to make changes based on the feedback it received on Star Wars: Outlaws. The company also confirmed that sales of “Desperado” were “lower than expected.”
For some context, Assassin’s Creed: Phantoms managed 5 million sales in its first month, despite being much smaller than regular Assassin’s Creed games. Maybe I’m being too generous, but I imagine Ubisoft would think that the Star Wars license alone would get them at least somewhat close to Phantom’s numbers.
The real problem Ubisoft faces with its low sales is that Outlaws is a licensed game, which means they have to pay Disney the bulk of their profits. It’s impossible to know the exact details of the contract, but thanks to leaks, we do know that Insomniac’s deal with Disney for the Spider-Man game means House of the Mouse is getting a bunch of cash. On top of that, any copy of Star Wars: Desperados sold on PlayStation or Xbox will take another 30% of the profits from Ubisoft. There’s much less demand on the Epic Store, but from what we hear, sales there won’t be high since Ubisoft has already announced that its game will be released on Steam on day one.
