Assassin’s Creed Shadows debuted final month to develop into the best-selling sport in the U.S. for March 2025 in greenback gross sales.
That is in keeping with analytics agency Circana, which reviews that Shadows has additionally develop into the second best-selling sport to date this 12 months, trailing solely Monster Hunter: Wilds and forward of Kingdom Come: Deliverance II. It was additionally the best-selling sport on Xbox in March, and second best-selling sport on PlayStation and Steam.
We reached out to Circana analyst Mat Piscatella for a bit extra context on Assassin’s Creed: Shadows’ success. He instructed us that Shadows’ launch was the third-biggest in franchise historical past in the U.S., following Assassin’s Creed 3 and Assassin’s Creed: Valhalla. “It is an awesome begin, so now we’ll should see the place it goes from right here.”
Final month, Ubisoft created a subsidiary firm primarily based on its Murderer’s Creed, Far Cry, and Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six manufacturers, with a €1.16 billion (approx. $1.25 billion) funding from Chinese language megacorp Tencent.
The information got here after Ubisoft introduced Assassin’s Creed Shadows had handed the 3 million participant mark. Ubisoft suffered various high-profile flops, layoffs, studio closures, and sport cancellations in the run as much as Shadows’ launch, and there’s monumental strain on it to succeed after the firm’s share worth hit an historic low.
Different stats reported by Ubisoft have been already revealed by IGN’s protection of an inside electronic mail in which the firm contextualized Shadows’ opening weekend efficiency, saying it was higher in comparison with Origins and Odyssey fairly than the “good storm” 2020’s Valhalla launched into.
Shadows noticed the second highest day-one gross sales income in Assassin’s Creed franchise historical past, behind solely Valhalla, the largest Ubisoft day-one ever on the PlayStation Retailer, and has seen over 40 million hours performed to date.
March was a giant month for new releases, with seven of the high 20 video games getting into the charts for the first time, together with WWE 2K24 (No.4), Cut up Fiction (No.5), Bleach: Rebirth of Souls (No.9), Xenoblade Chronicles X (No.17), and Suikoden I & II HD Remaster: Gate Rune & Dunan Unification Wars (No.18). Whats up Kitty Island Journey additionally ranked No. 4 on Nintendo Change particularly in its console debut, and free-to-play sport FragPunk debuted at No.8 in the Prime 10 Steam charts ranked by Month-to-month Lively Customers (MAUs).
In second place this month, simply behind Assassin’s Creed, was one other debut title: MLB: The Present 25, which was additionally the best-selling sport for the month on PlayStation. Its gross sales have been 23% increased than its predecessor, MLB The Present 24, throughout the similar debut month final 12 months.
Different video games doing nicely in March included Fortnite, which led all video games in MAUs on each Xbox and PlayStation, and Dragon Age: The Veilguard, which leapt from No.103 in February to No.10 in March on PlayStation particularly due to being added to PS+. Co-op horror sport R.E.P.O. made an analogous leap from No.93 in its debut month of February to No.1 in March on the Steam MAU charts, probably resulting from growing social media virality over time.
Regardless of all these thrilling new releases doing fairly nicely for themselves, March was truly a little bit of a low month for video games as an entire. General video games spending dropped 6% year-over-year to $4.7 billion, and content material spending dropped 4% year-over-year to $4.2 billion, Circana reviews. Non-mobile subscriptions and digital premium downloads on console have been the solely content material areas displaying development.
I requested Piscatella for context as to why content material spend was down, and he pointed to cellular as the main perpetrator. Cellular spending, per SensorTower’s report, was down 6% year-over-year.
“Cellular being such a giant element of content material implies that a dip there often means the market dips. Console full sport obtain spending was up this March. However declines in cellular and drops in PC full sport spend and a drop in digital add on content material spending meant total content material fell.”
As for {hardware}, spending was down 25% year-over-year to $286 million, the lowest March spending complete since 2019 ($279 million). PlayStation 5 was the best-selling console of the month, however its gross sales have been nonetheless down 26% year-over-year. Xbox took second place, down 9% year-over-year, and Change gross sales have been down 37% from final 12 months, probably in anticipation of the impending successor, the Nintendo Change 2.
March 2025 U.S. Prime 20 Best-Selling Video games:
- Assassin’s Creed: Shadows (NEW)
- MLB: The Present 25* (NEW)
- Monster Hunter: Wilds
- WWE 2K25 (NEW)
- Cut up Ficton (NEW)
- Name of Responsibility: Black Ops 6
- PGA Tour 2K25
- NBA 2K25
- Bleach: Rebirth of Souls (NEW)
- Kingdom Come: Deliverance II
- Minecraft*
- Grand Theft Auto V
- EA Sports activities FC 25
- Crimson Useless Redemption II
- Madden NFL 25
- Elden Ring
- Xenoblade Chronicles X* (NEW)
- Suikoden I & II Remaster: Gate Rune & Dunan Unificaiton Wars (NEW)
- Marvel’s Spider-Man 2
- EA Sports activities School Soccer 25
* Signifies that some or all digital gross sales should not included in Circana’s knowledge. Some publishers, together with Nintendo and Take-Two, don’t share sure digital knowledge for this report.
Rebekah Valentine is a senior reporter for IGN. You will discover her posting on BlueSky @duckvalentine.bsky.social. Acquired a narrative tip? Ship it to rvalentine@ign.com.