Assassin's Creed Series Tops 73 Million Copies Sold

Assassin's Creed Series Tops 73 Million Copies Sold

32
Richard Walker

Ubisoft has released an updated list of its fifteen best-selling video game series, charting the company's biggest franchises during its 28 years on the scene. Ubi's most popular series' have only cropped up in the last seven years, and it's Assassin's Creed - a series that began in 2007 - that tops the list with a staggering 73 million in sales.

It's probably not surprising given how prolific the Assassin's Creed series has been since its inception, with seven games in the main series on console, as well as four handheld entries, several mobile versions and a Facebook game.

In second place is the Just Dance series, which itself has accumulated 48 million sales since the first game launched in 2009. Just Dance spin-offs 'The Experience' titles are counted separately, with ABBA, Michael Jackson and The Black-Eyed Peas The Experience games amassed 9 million in sales.

Also featuring in Ubisoft's sales list is the Tom Clancy series, which occupies three slots in the top five, with Splinter Cell proving the most popular with 30 million old across the series, while Rainbow Six and Ghost Recon titles have managed to reach 26 and 25 million each, respectively. You can check out the list in full below.

  1. Assassin's Creed: 73 million
  2. Just Dance: 48 million
  3. Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell: 30 million
  4. Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six: 26 million
  5. Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon: 25 million
  6. Petz: 24 million
  7. Rayman: 25 million
  8. Imagine: 21 million
  9. Prince of Persia: 20 million
  10. Driver: 19 million
  11. Far Cry: 18 million
  12. Rayman Raving Rabbids: 14 million
  13. The Settlers: 10 million
  14. The Experience: 9 million
  15. Anno: 5 million

[Ubisoft via GI.biz]

Comments
32
  • So what they are actually saying is that Tom Clancy has sold more than Assassins Creed.
  • To be fair I'm sure there are far more Tom Clancy games than Assassins Creed but how the hell are there 48 million copies sold of just dance games. Are people losing their minds?
  • Splinter Cell & Rainbow Six > Assassin's Creed.
  • why do Assassins Creed games get bunched together but Tom Clancy does not
  • #4, Assassins creed games are all within the same franchise. Tom Clancy games all spilt off into different franchises.
  • @4: I guess because AC is 1 franchise and even though they say Tom Clancy, we have: Splinter Cell, Ghost Recon, Rainbow Six, HAWKS, etc. They are different franchises.
  • 48 million sales for Just Dance? Am I seeing things? Surely there's a decimal point there.
  • Assassin's Creed is a good Series one of my most loved ones AC2 is my favourite for story and AC4 for gameplay I don't care what people say about it each game is awesome
  • Splinter Cell may be 30 million, but Tom Clancy is general on that list is 81 million.
  • #2 - The same can be said about the number of AC sales...
  • @7 There is. After the 8 :P
  • Sadly, these numbers failed to meet sales expectations, so no more games will be made in the series.. :P
  • Your Damn Right I bought Just Dance. Its a pretty good way to get chicks to shake it up at your house. They love dancing games.
  • @2. Kinect/Wii users. Moms. Young Kids etc. People with no taste in music.
  • @4 Assassins Creed = 7 games plus hand held spin offs, Splinter cell = 6 games plus hand held spin off so why would you add all Tom Clancy games together. Assassins creed therefor is the better selling game.
  • What's Anno down there at number 15?
  • @16 Anno is kinda like Sim City, its not bad. The Tom Clancy games all run as different games, they dont reuse textures and character models etc between games whereas Assassins creed is pretty much the same game since the first one with different skins and cutscenes. 73 million bucks for one game with a few lazy arse revisions is good profit i guess.
  • Nice to see the Driver series in the list and above Far Cry aswell :) More Driver please Ubisoft.
  • Without yearly AC titles, I doubt Far Cry 3 would've been as good and Watch Dogs, The Crew and possibly even The Division likely wouldn't exist, Ubisoft are the video game Film company and hopefully they continue producing quality games for years to come.
  • So basically another reason for a yearly assassins creed game?... Yay?
  • AC is probably the only yearly iteration I look forward to anymore.
  • I'm surprised driver has outsold farcry. That will change soon I think.
  • I was late getting into the Assassin's Creed Series (played 1st one when Revelations was released), but I think it's one of my favorite series to play at this point. The game worlds have been getting bigger (so it seems) and the gameplay has been getting more seamless with each release.
  • @17: That's 73 million UNITS SOLD, not millions made. Consider that most game stores won't sell even a used copy of Assassin's Creed under $5, and it's at least 500 million made. That wouldn't be direct profit of course either though. But not every sale was a cheap used game sale either. More on topic, I fail to see how people can compare the sales of one franchise to a string of them, as if the multiple war-niche games of Tom Clancy somehow are all linked to one core franchise. Sure they all hit a similar demographic, but they are marketed as unique IPs. Not to mention that all three of the IPs on that list have all been around a lot longer than Assassin's Creed. Between the 3 there's been a total of 27 released titles to account for, the latest one into the market of the three franchises being Splinter Cell in 2002, still 5 years before we'd see our first Assassin's Creed game. Consider the time frame that Assassin's Creed has seen it's success, and the fact that it's only had 14 titles so far, with only half of those being on consoles. Granted a lot of the aforementioned 27 titles are also not console titles, but many were/are. There's also a lot of expansion packs and other DLC to account for in the mix of variables that could be counted for 'Units Sold.' Just looking at the numbers and pointing a finger to say X is better than Y is silly without really reading into things, because there's a lot that might come into consideration that isn't being accounted for.
  • @25 well none of the sales were used game sales because they dont count towards this, 73 million units is the number that were sold new. though i agree with the rest, these statistics really tell us nothing except perhaps that just dance sold stupidly well, perhaps that assassins creed doesnt sell well enough considering the number of them they pump out, the main series do well enough but when you include he whole franchise your talking an average of less than 2 million copies each which is awful
  • @26 In his world, there are 36 Assassin's Creed games. In this same world, games that sell 1-2M copies are awful for publishers. lol. Not even going to bother addressing why either of those is stupid. Anyone who is surprised by Just Dance has no connection with normal society, apparently. Those games are HUGE with kids and females. Do you never interact with either?
  • @27 i messed up the millions of numbers between just dance and assassins creed, easily done but still when you consider the break downs of that some of the assassins creed games came in well below what you would expect, i mean every game in the main series has sold around the 10 million mark (some over some under but all close enough) however the main series only accounts for around a third of the number of games meaning a good deal of them must have made next to nothing. oh and 1-2 million sales for a AAA title is terrible these days with a few exceptions your currently looking at 4-5 million to break even on a project, tomb raiders the most prominent example of late, after 4 million sales square were still at a loss with it budgets in this industry are just that stupidly high
  • Give us another rainbow six Vegas and haven't there only been 2 rainbow six Vegas so that's actually a good sale stat for that game.
  • @29 theres only been 2 raninbow 6 vegas games yes but there has been 17 rainbow 6 games in total, it is a very old series
  • @28 There are 6 main AC games, leaving 13M for Liberation and whatever the mobile games made. That seems quite fine. 1-2 Million can be enough. It depends entirely on how much you're selling the game for and how much development was. Square is colossally mismanaged, so it's no surprise their games don't make what they need to.
  • I've bought AC, AC2 + 2 Ezio Sequels, AC3, Far Cry 3 plus a couple of others. I'm responsible for 2.63*10^-6 of their sales! Also, seems a little odd that Rayman is 7th despite having more sales than Petz...
  • Well, I gotta say that I've thrown a lot of cash UbiSoft's way myself. I purchased AC, AC2, ACB, ACR, AC3, AC4, FC2, and FC3 on 360. I've got AC Rogue and Far Cry 4 preordered and paid for. I also had FC1 and IL-2 on PC back in the day and a few Driver games and Tom Clancy games on earlier consoles. Hey...keep making quality games that I want to play and I'll keep being your loyal customer. Doesn't hurt that I don't recall their CEO ever saying things as stupid as some others...Activision.
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