It’s not very often that Star Wars fans are treated to a video game these days, we’re lucky if there’s a new release once a year or once every two years. 2024 saw the release of the first non-EA Star Wars game in over a decade in the form of Star Wars: Outlaws from publisher Ubisoft.
Outlaws got its wide release on August 30th, those who pre-ordered more premium versions of the game got the title a few days early. The response and excitement around launch was fairly muted with the title getting a score of 76/100 on PS5 and PC along with 75/100 on Xbox via Metacritic. The initial lunch suffered a handful of noteworthy bugs, with the most headline inducing being that some of those who purchased the aforementioned premium versions of Outlaws for early access on PlayStation 5 had a game breaking bug that required players to start their story from scratch. Despite these hiccups, Outlaws did manage to get pretty positive reviews from critics.
Outlaws was the first Star Wars project to follow the Disney+ Star Wars series, The Acolyte, which divided fans, had a mixed response from critics and failed to garner enough viewers to enter the Nielsen Top 10 Streaming Origins chart for multiple weeks, up until that point, no live-action Star Wars series had failed to enter the chart whilst airing. So it was unfortunate for Outlaws that it had to follow what’s likely the most disappointing Star Wars series release and probably one of the most disappointing Star Wars releases overall under the Disney era in terms of performance.
Last month, Reuters shared a report that Star Wars: Outlaws, after its first week, had struggled to reach projections. The outlet spoke with J.P. Morgan analyst, Daniel Kerven, who shared that analysts have now tweaked their sales projections for the Ubisoft release by two million copies, projecting that Outlaws would sell around 5.5 million copies come the end of March 2025, the end of the fiscal year.
It’s now being reported exclusively by Insider Gaming that Star Wars: Outlaws has sold just one million copies worldwide since the video games launch last month. Though Ubisoft have shared their sales expectations publicly, you’d assume the figure being shared by Insider Gaming is a far cry from Ubisoft’s initial hopes. For comparison, Insider Gaming shared that within three months, Assassins Creed: Mirage sold five million copies within three months. Based on the Reuters article, Outlaws is only projected to sell 5.5M by the end of March next year.
It’s worth noting that Star Wars: Outlaws was also available to play via the Ubisoft+ service upon its launch. Those who accessed the title via the service had to subscribe for $17.99. Ubisoft+ is only available on Xbox and PC, PlayStation 5 is excluded. Despite being available on Ubisoft+, it’s likely that most players that got their hands on Outlaws did so with a traditional purchase and not via Ubisoft+, especially when you factor in the popularity of the PlayStation 5 which is reportedly outselling the Xbox Series X by 3-to-1.
Ubisoft were hoping for a better year financially with the release of Stat Wars: Outlaws and their eagerly anticipated new entry in the Assassins Creed franchise, Assassins Creed: Shadows. Shadows was recently delayed into February of next year, still within the fiscal year, but disappointingly for Ubisoft, Shadows will miss out on those Holiday sales later this year. Many expect to see Star Wars: Outlaws available at a discounted price ahead of this years Black Friday and heading into the holiday period, so if you haven’t already purchased Outlaws and still have an interest in checking out the title, perhaps then will be the best time to do so.
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