More than a year after the release of Assassin’s Creed Shadows, Ubisoft has seemingly struck gold with Assassin’s Creed Black Flag Resynced. Despite the title coming out just today, it has already started outselling its predecessor, according to a report by Alinea Analytics’ Rhys Elliot. In a recent newsletter, Elliot has estimated that the PC version of Assassin’s Creed Black Flag Resynced has already sold more than 300,000 copies on Steam, bringing in almost $14 million in gross revenue.
Interestingly, Elliot also brought up sales comparisons with Ubisoft Singapore’s other pirate-themed game, Skull & Bones, noting that Black Flag Resynced has already outsold its entire lifetime run on Steam. Elliot has also estimated that, in the same time frame, Black Flag Resynced has sold over 5 times as many copies on Steam as Shadows did.
For a broader perspective on sales figures, Elliot has noted that Assassin’s Creed Shadows has sold 5.7 million copies since its release, with Steam accounting for 23.8 percent of the sales. PS5 took the lion’s share, with 53.6 percent of sales, followed by Xbox in third place with 23.6 percent. In its lifetime, Shadows sold 1.3 million copies on Steam, which puts Black Flag Resynced almost a quarter of the way there in terms of surpassing it.
Elliot also brought up other interesting statistics, like the fact that Assassin’s Creed Black Flag Resynced had 1.2 million wishlists ahead of launch. 25 percent of these fans had also wishlisted Sea of Thieves. 18 percent had the original release of Black Flag on their wishlists, while 7 percent wishlisted indie pirate-themed survival crafting game Windrose.
The analyst ascribes quite a bit of the success of Assassin’s Creed Black Flag Resynced to nostalgia for the original 2013 release of Black Flag, as well as its $59.99 price tag, which is well below the industry standard of $70. “Pricing a nostalgia-driven remake below the new industry ceiling is a deliberate accessibility play, maximising the addressable audience for a lower-risk title rather than squeezing margins per copy,” he wrote.
The fact that Ubisoft has been going through quite a bit of hardship due to the failure of major live service games like Skull & Bones also means that Black Flag Resynced was a sorely needed win for the company. “Ubisoft is dealing with fractured pipelines,” explained Elliot. “Building an unproven new IP from scratch is a six-to-eight-year gamble costing hundreds of millions.”
“High-fidelity remakes of beloved legacy titles are the low-risk alternative – and one Ubi hasn’t really leveraged much yet. Such remakes reuse a universally praised design blueprint, lowering creative risk while guaranteeing a built-in audience. For a publisher mid-transition, these remakes are a financial cushion, stabilizing the balance sheet and winning back investor and consumer confidence while the long-term bets bake.”
Depending on your time zone, Assassin’s Creed Black Flag Resynced is available on PC, PS5, and Xbox Series X/S. Take a look at our review for more details, where we gave it a score of 9 out of 10 thanks to its refinements to parkour, combat, and naval battle gameplay. Our only complaint revolved around the fact that its stealth systems still feel rudimentary at times.
