Although I actually quite enjoyed it, the rest of the world responded to the release of Star Wars: Outlaws with apathy. The critical reception was okay and there was at least some mild interest in it prior to release, but once it was out the discussions dried up quickly and people lost interest. It seems putting Star Wars on the box doesn’t draw in a crowd anymore.
That idea has been backed up by a new report from the excellent Grant Taylor-Hill of Insider Gaming. According to Grant, who presumably had to pull off some Sam Fisher nonsense to get into Ubisoft HQ, the game has sold just a million copies in its first month.
Grant goes on to say that he was unable to confirm exactly what sales Ubisoft was expecting, but I think it’s safe to say were thinking a bit higher than a million.
It puts Ubisoft’s recent comments and decisions into some perspective, though. Last week, the company announced it was delaying Assassin’s Creed: Shadows, in part because it wanted to make changes based on feedback it had received for Star Wars: Outlaws. The company also confirmed that sales of Outlaws were ‘softer than expected’.
For some context, Assassin’s Creed: Mirage managed 5 million in its first month, despite it being a much smaller game than the regular Assassin’s Creed entries. Perhaps I’m being too generous, but I imagine Ubisoft would have thought the Star Wars license alone would bring them at least somewhat close to Mirage’s numbers.
The real issue that Ubisoft faces with low sales is that Outlaws is a licensed game, meaning they have to pay Disney a chunk of the profits. It’s impossible to know the exact details of the contract, but we do know, thanks to leaks, that Insomniac’s deal with Disney for the Spider-Man games means the House of the Mouse gets paid a significant chunk of cash. On top of that, any copy of Star Wars: Outlaws sold on PlayStation or Xbox takes another 30% of the profits away from Ubisoft. The Epic store takes far less, but as we know sales there can’t be great as Ubisoft has announced its games will be launching on Steam on day 1 moving forward.