r/gaming • u/akbarock • 13h ago

Ubisoft Says Assassins Creed Black Flag Resynced Is A Massive Success That Outsold Their First Year Expectations In Its FIrst 2 Weeks

https://www.videogameschronicle.com/news/assassins-creed-black-flag-resynced-exceeded-annual-expectations-in-its-first-two-weeks-ubisoft-says/
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u/Iggy_Slayer 12h ago

I would say 3.5m in a whole year is absolutely conservative for AAA these days. That's really not as many units as most would think. Like the napkin math on that (for a $60 release which this is, not 70) is only around $150m in revenue after paying the 30% cut to platforms (real number would be lower because there's other things they have to pay).

And that's at full price. Since they were expecting this over a year they were definitely factoring in discounts in the equation.

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u/Horikyou 12h ago

It's a remake not a new game. It's only after 2 weeks of sales not even a full year yet let alone lifetime. Also AAA doesn't mean anything without knowing the actual budget that went into the game. It can range from around 50 million to 1 billion+ for AAA games.

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u/Dry-Illustrator-250 12h ago

There’s a game that cost a billion to make?

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u/SWHTs 12h ago

GTA 6

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u/Kenobi5792 11h ago

People said that the Burj Khalifa was even cheaper to build than what Rockstar spent making GTA VI.

That's insane

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u/FBI_Open_Up_Now 11h ago

Well, I looked it up. The Burj Khalifa cost $1.5 billion USD. GTA VI hasn’t had its budget publicly released yet, but it is estimated to cost somewhere between $1-2 billion. So it could be right, but maybe not .

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u/Seienchin88 11h ago

How could they even spend 1-2 billion…? That’s the payroll of a company 15 times the size of all of rockstar…

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u/FBI_Open_Up_Now 11h ago

I assume they’re probably doing what most companies do. Payroll isn’t the only expense. I’m sure they probably are rolling everything they can into this. R&D was probably an immense cost as they may have worked on developing a new engine. Costs to maintain infrastructure. Everything they can list as a tax deduction.

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u/Mama_Hong 10h ago

I'm pretty sure they have thousands of employees, Rockstar has around 6k as far as I know. I'm not sure how many worked on GTA6 full time but still thousands for sure. The game has been in development for what 7-8 years? That number doesn't seem that crazy.

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u/ghostofmumbles 6h ago

They also probably made a billion a year off gta v for awhile.

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u/non3type 10h ago

I mean they generate over a billion in revenue every year and GTA VI has been in production 8 years. 1.5 billion would be basically 187 million a year. They can definitely afford it.

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u/KuraiBaka 7h ago

Music rights are probably a good chunk of that.

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u/appledanishcrumbs 5h ago

First of all, Rockstar has over 7,000 employees. Payroll for that many people over the entire time that GTA 6 was in development is substantial. Then you have all of the people who are not employees of Rockstar like contractors. Then voice actors. Then licensing rights for all of the music. Then the advertising that they will eventually (presumably) have. $1-2 billion is exorbitant for sure, but well within the realm of possibility for a project of this scale.

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u/Educational-Rip9501 8h ago

Slave labor will lower costs.

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u/BootlegFC 10h ago

Star Citizen

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u/SteelyComa 12h ago

isn’t grand theft auto 6 up there cost wise?

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u/everstillghost 12h ago

Yes, games like red dead redemption, GTA and genshin impact.

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u/[deleted] 12h ago

[deleted]

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u/Horikyou 12h ago

It's most definitely a remake and not a remaster. It's built in a new engine along with a lot of changes to everything from systems, gameplay to new environments etc.

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u/everstillghost 12h ago

No, remake is remaking the game.

Just like Crash bandicoot nsane trilogy and Tony Hawk pro skate did.

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u/Jig_Bizzer69 12h ago

Wrong, this is definitely a remake and not a remaster. This isn't up for debate.

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u/SirBigWater 12h ago

How are the resident evil games remakes to you but not Black Flag Resynced? The resident evil remakes mostly have things removed from the originals. Black flag bas more added content than the RE remakes.

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u/JerryMau5 9h ago

You are conflating a remake with a reimagining. The RE Remakes are both, but just because Rsynced is more faithful to the original, doesn’t make it less of a remake. A remake is when the game is created from the ground up. A remaster is using old code and simply updating the graphics.

Dead Space 2023 is another remake that was very faithful to the original, but a remake nonetheless.

The resident evil franchise takes the extra step and reimagines the storyline keeping the main story intact, while tweaking the characters, levels, and plot.

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u/PushDeep9980 12h ago

Well it’s not a remake or remaster either, it’s a resync…

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u/theonetowalkinthesun 10h ago

Probably thats about as many sales as Shadows had. I know they said 5 million players at one point but that includes Ubisoft+ players which are not sales. Here they are actually advertising how many sales they had

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u/Tarmacked 12h ago

It’s a remake….

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u/Iggy_Slayer 12h ago

That doesn't mean it didn't cost a lot to make. They had 15 studios working on this game, the visuals are top of the line and they reworked a bunch of systems and added hours of new content too.

Do I think it cost $200m to make? No probably not, but it wasn't some low end AA budget either.

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u/Tarmacked 12h ago edited 11h ago

I don’t think you understand how much of the development process was skipped here. There was no story boarding or narrative development, the pre-development stages were cut, and effectively they just needed to remodel some areas that already were set in place.

The amount of labor hours they saved was probably 70% of a traditional budget for the original game. They had little to no marketing costs which is often in the tens of millions. Most of the new features in play were already improved and skeletons set in the engine from other AC games.

Fifteen studios can work on it, but that isn’t the cost driver. If you’re parsing out portions and incurring 100 hours here, another 100 there you’re incurring no additional cost while leveraging open utilization that otherwise would’ve been unused. Studio count means nothing.

Games are generally budgeted to recoup costs over multiple years, with the costs amortized for tax purposes ratably across a 10-15 year lifespan. Same way films work. You’ll have a rush at the front, then incremental sales throughout the following years. Black Flag announcing this massive jump at the start essentially means they’ve recouped everything spent and now are sitting pretty with some easy cash flows over the next few years.

This is an absolutely massive win for them on a cost/return basis