Assassin's Creed Shadows delay is a real gamble for Ubisoft | Opinion

I always felt like Star Wars Outlaws should have been a Christmas game.

The title was revealed during the E3-that-wasn't in 2023 and received a rapturous response. It skyrocketed to the top of media wish lists and stole the show that year. A big, mainstream open world blockbuster set in the Star Wars universe... As long as it's not rubbish, how could it go wrong?

And yet it did. So many column inches have been preoccupied with the total failure of Concord, and understandably so, yet Sony's game was always a high risk concept. A new IP from a new developer in a space that PlayStation has little experience playing in… it was always a gamble. Star Wars Outlaws was none of those things. It should have flown off the digital shelves.

It continues a run of poor fortune and form for Ubisoft, and with anxious shareholders and a large wage bill, you have to fear the worst when it comes to the prospect of job cuts.

The first indicator, to me at least, that Star Wars Outlaws might not deliver financially came during Summer Games Fest in June. A year on from its reveal, and there was almost a level of apathy to what was being shown. Social media stats and wish list data put the game behind not just the big reveals, but many of the smaller ones, too. Of course, Outlaws was never going to get the buzz of a new announcement, but with less than three months to launch, it felt to me like the gaming world looked at it and shrugged.

There are plenty of armchair analysts eager to explain what happened. It was the release window, the business model, the available platforms, the review scores, the inconsistency of recent Star Wars TV shows and movies… the fact the game's protagonist isn't a bloke. I'm not convinced by any of those arguments in isolation (certainly not the last one). Yet I can't help but wonder that if the game was released in late October or early November then it might have found some broader players. It is the big Star Wars 'thing' of the holiday window. An old-school AAA gaming blockbuster for parents to buy with the PS5s they're getting their kids. Time it right, and a small Black Friday discount would help achieve that, too.

Shadows now arrives in a competitive window, arguably more so than the November slot it was initially scheduled for

I am sure in any other year it would have been a year-end release, but in 2024 Ubisoft already had one in the form of Assassin's Creed Shadows. Assassin's has always been a holiday game, and it's an IP that Ubisoft owns. There's no revenue to share with Disney on this one. It made sense to give that game the headline slot.

Well, now Assassin's has been moved to early next year, and primarily so that Ubisoft can reconfigure its release strategy. The firm appears to have heard some of the complaints around its business models, and is choosing to take a more consumer-friendly approach going forward.

That means that this Christmas, Ubisoft will be putting all of its efforts behind selling Star Wars (and Just Dance, of course).

The days when pre-owned effectively made it impossible for publishers to recover from a poor launch are over. There will be marketing activity that Ubisoft had booked for Assassin's that can be repurposed for a second go with Outlaws.There's room for the game, too. Call of Duty and Dragon Age are big, big games due this October, but that's about it for Q4 (although there are plenty of promising niche games on the slate).

The game's critical reception has been broadly decent, and the dev team at Massive is working on a number of tweaks and changes to improve some of the areas that came in for a bit of criticism. If Ubisoft can also stretch to a few decent Black Friday deals, there's every chance Star Wars Outlaws could emerge as a popular game over November and December.

Meanwhile, Assassin's Creed in a February slot is certainly an unusual sight, but Ubisoft has form with delivering hits during the early months of the year. It's done it before with Far Cry and The Division. And more broadly, we've seen some massive February games in recent times, such as with Helldivers 2 (2024), Hogwarts Legacy (2023) and Elden Ring (2022).

Where I am a little apprehensive is the game's proximity to another significant Q1 release in Monster Hunter Wilds.

Star Wars continues a run of poor fortune for Ubisoft, and with anxious shareholders and a large wage bill, you have to fear the worst when it comes to the prospect of job cuts

Capcom's RPG launches two weeks after Assassin's Creed, and the buzz behind it is strong globally. It was one of the game's of the show at Gamescom in August, and it's an IP that's seen its popularity skyrocket in the West. What's more, it's a massive franchise in Japan, a market that Ubisoft was hoping to win over with Shadows (which is set in Japan).

It's not just Monster Hunter, either. Kingdom Come Deliverance 2, which has not-too-dissimilar appeal, is set for February. As is Microsoft's big new IP Avowed. 2025 will also see the release of Sony's Ghost of Tsushima sequel Ghost of Yotei, which is another Western-developed historical adventure game set in Japan – although hopefully that one will launch a little later in the year.

Ultimately, Shadows arrives in a competitive window, arguably more so than the November slot it was initially scheduled for. And Ubisoft will be mindful of the challenges Sony had when it released Horizon Forbidden West just a week before Elden Ring in February 2022.

The stated aim for Ubisoft with this delay is so that it can change its approach to releasing games. As part of this announcement, the publisher has committed to launching its titles on PC via Steam going forward on day one. The Epic Games Store experiment simply hasn't paid off. The firm is also dropping its sometimes unpopular Season Pass business model, and looking to engage its users at the same time without an early access solution.

Whether these changes generate the desired goodwill amongst the community remains to be seen. But, in pure commercial terms, if delaying Assassin's Creed can allow Star Wars Outlaws to perform strongly over the festive period, and if Assassin's can still deliver the expected numbers in its new February slot… then it may prove to be a wise decision by Yves Guillemot and company.

But make no mistake, it's a move that carries considerable risk.