Assassin's Creed Shadows Is Surging — Nintendo Switch 2 Port Could Supercharge Its Reach

Ubisoft is doing that classic dance: lots of victory laps, not a lot of hard numbers. But buried in the latest financial update, there is a clearer picture of how Assassin's Creed Shadows is actually doing — and it sounds like the company is pretty happy with itself.

Ubisoft says Shadows is beating expectations

The Assassin's Creed franchise exceeded our expectations and has been overperforming.

That is Ubisoft’s headline takeaway. The company is still avoiding exact sales figures for Shadows, but it did trot out more engagement data and some comparisons to past entries to make the case.

The numbers they are willing to share

• Shadows launched with three million players in its first week.
• It posted the second-highest day-one sales revenue in Assassin's Creed franchise history.
• Year to date, Assassin's Creed games have racked up 211 million session days — roughly 35% higher than the average of the last two years.
• Shadows got a lift from its New Game+ drop, which Ubisoft says the community had been waiting on.
• Over in Mirage land, the Valley of Memory update doubled player activity and pushed that game to the 10 million player milestone.
• Market tracker Circana estimated Shadows was the best-selling game in the US during its first three weeks.

Why people thought it was underperforming

From the start, Ubisoft framed Shadows success around 'players' rather than raw sales. That count includes anyone jumping in via the Ubisoft+ subscription, not just folks who bought a copy outright. That muddied the water and kicked up speculation that sales might be softer than the PR suggested. Ubisoft isn’t changing that strategy now, but the company is trying to counter the narrative with engagement stats and a few competitive benchmarks.

How it stacks up to past Assassin's Creed launches

Earlier this year, Ubisoft said Shadows outpaced Assassin's Creed Odyssey but did not hit the launch highs of Valhalla — which the company still describes as a 'perfect storm' moment for the brand. In other words: strong, just not peak-Valhalla strong.

What is next

Ubisoft expects Shadows to find even more players when it arrives on Nintendo Switch 2 at the beginning of next month. If that timeline holds, it would put the game in front of a fresh audience right as the new hardware heat kicks in.

The broader market vibe (and why Ubisoft is talking like this)

After shipping both Assassin's Creed Shadows and Star Wars Outlaws, Ubisoft is calling the market more volatile — free-to-play options and subscriptions are crowding the field, and the company says plenty of new games are struggling to break through. Framed that way, Shadows driving big engagement and landing early sales wins (even if the exact totals are still under wraps) is something Ubisoft is very motivated to spotlight.