Assassin's Creed Valhalla Gives Next-Gen Gaming Its First Big Hit

Perhaps owing to the fact that it's one of the most notable launch titles for the Xbox Series X, it seems that Assassin's Creed Valhalla is off to a very strong start. While Ubisoft hasn't shared any sales numbers for the game yet, it has compared the launch of Valhalla to that of Assassin's Creed Odyssey, and it looks like Valhalla is proving to be a lot more popular than its predecessor.

Specifically, Ubisoft said in a press release today that Assassin's Creed Valhalla had double the number of launch day players that Assassin's Creed Odyssey had back in 2018. In addition, Ubisoft said that "the game has reached high levels of viewership and engagement on Twitch and YouTube that surpass any Ubisoft game launch to date."

There are likely a few reasons for Valhalla's success. The first is that reviews have been fairly solid, with the PC version of the game currently holding down an 84 out of 100 on Metacritic. Then there's also the fact that, along with DIRT 5, Assassin's Creed Valhalla is among the most notable launch titles for Xbox Series X. To some extent, Assassin's Creed Valhalla could owe this success to the delay of Halo Infinite, at least as far as the Xbox Series X player base is concerned.

Then you have the fact that Assassin's Creed Valhalla is available on a wide array of platforms. In addition to the Xbox Series X and PC, Assassin's Creed Valhalla also launched on PlayStation 4, Stadia, and Xbox One on Tuesday, November 10th. Today, the game is launching alongside the PlayStation 5 as well.

It's likely that PlayStation 5 sales will be another big boost for Valhalla, and Ubisoft is expecting the game to enjoy strong sales throughout the holiday shopping season. Hopefully Ubisoft will share some more specific sales numbers later on down the road, so we'll be keeping an eye out for those.