Ubisoft Expects Watch Dogs to Move 6 Million Units

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By Catherine Cai
published

Ubisoft has really high expectations for Watch Dogs.

Videogame development budgets have ballooned in the last decade to rival that of blockbuster movies. There were reports floating around the time of BioShock Infinite's release that the game took $100 million to develop and another $100 million to market. With budgets like that, it's no wonder big publishers have high sales expectations for their games. Square Enix, for instance, decided that Tomb Raider's 3.4 million units sold in the first month wasn't enough. These expectations are a bit ludicrous, especially among analyst reports that claim that the market is only big enough for 10-12 multimillion dollar budget AAA games in a year. Obviously, the current number of AAA titles being released dwarfs this figure. 

Yet these discouraging numbers don't have Ubisoft down. The French publisher fully expects Watch Dogs to perform as well as the original Assassin's Creed, which sold 6.2 million copies. "What is true is that three months ago when we announced our results, we were kind of referencing that we, in our plan, we had built up Watch Dogs with expectation slightly below what Assassin's Creed 1 did when it was first released--and it was 6.2 million," stated a Ubisoft director. "So after E3, what we said today was that we do feel that we can expect…slightly above the 6.2 million that Assassin's Creed did."   

Watch Dogs is blitzing plenty of platforms come November 19th, releasing for Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, Wii U, and PC. The Xbox One and PS4 versions will be hitting soon after each next-gen console launches. 

Catherine Cai
17 Comments Comment from the forums
  • bison88
    If your game is good you shouldn't have to spend tens of millions to market it. Word of mouth is ALWAYS what finds the good games and creates successful titles. The amount of money developers and studios throw at video games and movies is ridiculous. We are now in the age of $50 million dollar game developments and Quarter-BILLION dollar movies every month.

    Companies are basing their entire existence release by release. One failing and its game over. No pun intended.
    Reply
  • Giovanni-L
    @bison88

    dude, you might not have spent the time required to realize stuff on your own through your own thoughts, but i have. And i have spoken to people both younger and older than me that have the same habit: to think thoroughly about the stuff you heard and saw during the day.

    You'd be amazed and overwhelmed (as i was at first) to know that people around us are incredibly stupid and susceptible to suggestion -advertising, for example.

    You probably never realized, but even you (me, too!) have felt bad for not being alike to the people around us or not behaving alike. That may be burried deeply into your sub-conscious but believe me, it's there.

    Advertisements nowadays are thought and executed in a way that most people (who don't have a very strong will and mindset) will succumb and do as said, somewhat like programming their subconsciousness. BE AWARE. RESIST. YOUR DECISIONS ARE YOURS TO MAKE!
    Reply
  • none12345
    Whats sad is there are a LOT of games with a low budget say under 5 million that seem like much better games then the $50 million or $100 million games.

    $100 million for marketing....is just nuts. If only they spent that on the game iself, it would likely be much better...
    Reply
  • crazedaku
    @bison88

    I disagree. I believe that a game CAN be found through word of mouth, but if no one ever hears about it in the first place, how will they know it exists? You can't just expect people to find your product randomly. And as you put it, companies are putting their entire existence on the line based on the sales of one game, they can't afford for people to not know about it. I personally don't think that Ubisoft's existence hinges on this one game though, they have several AAA titles to fall back on, worst case scenario is that we don't see a sequel.
    Reply
  • crazedaku
    @bison88

    I disagree. I believe that a game CAN be found through word of mouth, but if no one ever hears about it in the first place, how will they know it exists? You can't just expect people to find your product randomly. And as you put it, companies are putting their entire existence on the line based on the sales of one game, they can't afford for people to not know about it. I personally don't think that Ubisoft's existence hinges on this one game though, they have several AAA titles to fall back on, worst case scenario is that we don't see a sequel.
    Reply
  • shikamaru31789
    I wouldn't be suprised at all if it sells more than 10 million copies. Afterall, it's releasing on a ton of platforms, meaning it's accessible, and it's won all kinds of awards so far including several Best of E3 awards. I know I'll be getting a copy, and maybe even a second copy on a next-gen console or PC later on after I have money for one.
    Reply
  • bluestar2k11
    "So after E3, what we said today was that we do feel that we can expect…slightly above the 6.2 million that Assassin's Creed did."

    My my. If I do say, someone has some.. High hopes.
    Wonder what they'll blame when they fail to reach half that?

    Oh yeah...

    Piracy. Thats the solution to any question about games isn't it?
    Can't possibly be anything else, like the publishers pushing, poor developer ideas/coordination, poor quality gameplay, crappy ports. Maybe a few others I forgot, but to them it just comes down to piracy.

    Guess we'll find out by next years first quarter.

    But a tip Ubi, don't dump 200m on anything unless you've got promise notes from 3.3m gamers. (To say nothing of turning a profit.)
    Reply
  • soldier44
    So you can make this game for the PC but not The Division Ubi?
    Reply
  • shikamaru31789
    @soldier44 They said that they're considering a PC release. They're asking PC gamers to show their interest in a PC release by singing any and all petitions they can find.
    Reply
  • fightingslu
    I might consider this game if Ubisoft didn't do such a half-assed job of porting games to PC. That and uPlay, especially after they got account info stolen.
    Reply