Assassins Creed 2 Lost Money ($54.02 Million) aka DRM is the Devil

No s***. What do you get when you mix a medicore game with tons of DRM crap. A loss. Now watch them blame all the dirty pirates out there for this one, lol, fools. Here is the story from Gamasutra :French Splinter Cell publisher Ubisoft recorded a decrease in sales and a loss for the fiscal year ended March 31, 2010, blaming worldwide economic downturn.

[LastDance]

......English FTW? It's not hard to write correctly. The title doesn't even manage to make sense.

[tplarkin7]

9 million units of AC2 sold. DRM did not damper sales at all.

[StanLee]

I wonder how Assassin's Creed 2 could have lost money when the game sold 9 million units. Moreover, how is a game with a 90 metascore a "mediocre" game. Am I missing something?!

Edit: The writer is an idiot; Ubisoft collectively lost 54.2 million not Assassin's Creed. Who approved this?!

[siyrobbo]

i thought assassnins creed 2 was one of the best games last year, improved in nearly every way over the original

[thematrix1298]

The author is smoking some nice shyt!

[feelintheflow]

This article is ignorant.

[darkmurder]

This article sucks ... like Ubisoft's DRM

[Sm0k3y_Bac0n]

Who approved this? N4G users are getting stupider by the day. This guy should consider a career in childrens fiction.

[dirthurts]

Using "stupider" when insulting intelligence.
I chuckled a bit.

[Sm0k3y_Bac0n]

Stupider is a word.
http://www.askoxford.com/co...
Thus my point is proved.

[PimpHandHappy]

i wont click this site so im just going off the title

i thought this game sold 9 million?!?!? Are they saying it lost 54 million?!?!?

WTF is this

[Xof]

Even the premise is absurd.

[caffman]

the PC version lost $54M

[PimpHandHappy]

yea i can see that with all the hacks BUT IT STILL SOLD 9 million copies!
i cant see how they lost money even with PC gamers buying this game... btw im guessing this game sold well under a million on PC

[kneon]

The article is stupid. The company as a whole lost $54million. I'm quite sure AC2 made a ton of money, it was one of the top selling games of the year. If you can't make money selling 9 million copies of a game then you had better pack up and go home now.

They probably lost money on all those Wii titles, it's hard to compete with Nintendo on the Wii. I expect we'll be seeing the Rabbids on PS3 and Xbox soon, they can probably sell better there.

[peowpeow]

I wonder how you lose $54M doing an average port, and distributing online.

Maybe they spent $54M on DRM?

[mastiffchild]

Yeah, the company as a whole had a deficit of that amount if I try to make sense of that scrawl-a single game losing that much even across all platforms is an impossibility when it's sold(which means actually paid for!)9million units! Unless, of course, he thinks that DRM actually STEALS money from Ubisoft?!!

Funniest thing is nobody mentioned DRM or piracy except the dude from AG! Ubi weren't doing a very good job of blaming piracy there, were they? Also, he accuses them of being out of touch with gamers(which may well be the case as no one is saying their DRM either worked that well or didn't pi55 off a lot of legit customers) but how out of touch is he if he thinks a global downturn can't have any effect on what people spend on what are, ultimately, a luxury purchase?

Hell, I'm EXACTLY the kind of person who doesn't like our industry trying to have it's cake and eat it at our expense and would agree that issues the industry has with both piracy and used game sales is way, way overstated. Other industries cope just fine without crying anything like as much when people decide they either want to try before buying OR don't feel a product is good enough for them to live with FOREVER! Sadly, though, if this is the standard of person(and writing)sticking up for PC gamers everywhere I think we could be in trouble-and it won't help the way other people view us al either!

[Charmers]

The PC version did not lose them $54m you are just going by the headline. It clearly says :-

"The company on Tuesday recorded a 17.7 percent drop in annual sales to €871 million ($1.08 billion), and posted a loss of €43.7 million ($54.02 million).

So they made an operating loss of $54.02 million this cannot be attributed to just "the PC". Although you have to wonder if Ubisoft hadn't acted in such a crappy way to the PC maybe their titles might have sold better and turned that loss into a decent profit.

[mittwaffen]

Where to I app to be a Mod on here?

[fourtwenty2009]

You click the LOGOUT button or our embedded hot key ALT+F4.

Thanks for your application!

[mittwaffen]

Nice one.

Not that what you said isnt overused by yeast infected twats like you.

[micro_invader]

He basically copy-pasted the article from Gamasutra and added "lol" and "blahlahblah".

What a piece of crap.

[GarandShooter]

'What a piece of crap.'

The article or the writer?

[Redempteur]

"Guillemot said during a conference call that Ubisoft will continue to support Nintendo’s platform, but with a focus on family-friendly titles"

dammit i can already expect a new rabbit game and more "please teach me how to write" on the DS ...

way to go ubisoft ... i have yet to see a worthy ubisoft title on the DS/psp

[kneon]

You can't blame them. If Nintendo owners don't support any "real" games then why should they keep making them? They are a business and will make whatever sells and drop what doesn't.

[Redempteur]

that's not true ... it's already proven that worthwhile games sells on ds whatever make them ... good game sells ( ds) ubisoft just oly make idiotic familly games intead of trying something "original" or "different"

[fjtorres]

Asassin's Creed 2 made a ton of money for Ubisoft, DRM or no DRM. That's why there is an AC3 coming. Duh!

Read the statement carefully and you'll see the Ubisoft didn't sell as much Wii stuff as expected, because of the recession, *and* have been investing heavily in Natal and Move development that won't pay-off until next year. So they spent more than they took in. Hardly newsworthy these days, really.

Also, while nobody likes to lose money, a $54 million loss is peanuts to a company that size.

[xg-ei8ht]

Mods don't care about the garbage on this site, it brings in the people.

People loving arguing about nothing.

It's the world in which we live.

[djfullshred]

Lots of stupid people write articles about games these days. A game that sold 9 million copies did not result in a 54 million dollar loss. Also, several million people that bought it think it is better than "mediocre".

[throw_this_away]

Copy paste... and add a few lines of junk opinion that does not really relate to the cut/paste info. Did a 13 year old boy write this article? N4G needs more quality control for the articles it links.

[DeathProof]

The point is the company lost 54 million, not specifically Assassins Creed II. The correlation is that the company bends over to its stockholders while shafting paying customers. It was a chance to rip on them and also point out the strange phenomenon that the company is losing money at the same time they are trying to implement s*** like their intrusive DRM. : )