It’s been a pretty good year for Ubisoft, after a pretty good week for Far Cry 5. In its annual sales report released last week, the company announced that the open-world shooter hauled in $310 million during its release week, boosting Ubisoft’s annual sales above the $2 billion mark.
According to the Hollywood Reporter, the game more than doubled the sales of its predecessor, Far Cry 4, over the same period. It’s still not the publisher’s biggest launch in history, however — that title belongs to Tom Clancy’s The Division, which raked in $330 million in its first week in 2016.
The game was released just before the annual earnings deadline, so the first week of sales contributed to Ubisoft’s total, which were also buoyed by strong fourth-quarter performances from Assassin’s Creed: Origins, Rainbow Six Siege, and Ghost Recon Wildlands.
The game racked up more than 117 million views on YouTube and Twitch for streaming gameplay. The PlayStation 4 version did especially well, with more than twice the sales of the Xbox One version. Nearly half of the games sold (47 percent) were in North America.
The French company touted the achievement on its website, noting that the first week saw more than five million fish caught, 8,651 players ambushed by skunks, and a total “shovel throw” distance exceeding 24,000 miles.
“I’m proud that the culmination of years of passionate work from the team is paying off, and that Far Cry 5‘s experience resonates with so many people,” said Executive Producer Dan Hay. “We are humbled by players’ reception of Far Cry 5 and fired up to keep growing and supporting the Far Cry community in the months and years to come.”
In our journey into the wilds of Montana, we found the wild open world fun and full of things to do, but with a clunky narrative that never quite lives up to its promise. Before you head off into the woods and get eaten by a grizzly bear named Cheeseburger, we’d recommend you check out our beginner’s guide to the game.
The Division 2 has already been announced, but an inadvertent Amazon leak suggests that a new Splinter Cell may be in the works from Ubisoft as well. With E3 right around the corner, we’ll keep an ear to the ground for all the latest news leading up to the big expo.
Acer’s Predator Atlas 8 finally has a US release date and price, several months after the company first showed off the handheld in May. The highlight is the Intel Arc G3 Extreme chip inside, which has been adopted by only a couple of other consoles besides the Atlas 8. This version will go on sale exclusively at Best Buy on November 1 for $1,299.99.
Acer originally said the Atlas 8 would arrive in North America in October, but left pricing open at the time. The launch came amid the ongoing DRAM crunch, which has made memory more expensive across the PC industry and complicated pricing for hardware makers.
Gaming laptops and I have a complicated relationship. One of my first gaming rigs was an Acer Predator that was already outdated when I bought it. I was a broke college kid, and that was the best I could afford. So trying out high-end gaming laptops is always fun. But ASUS' ROG Zephyrus G14 is a lot more than a laptop that can run AAA games. It is portable, so you're not lugging around a 2.5kg machine everywhere you go. It is built well, none of that plastic chassis, and can even function as a normal laptop outside of just gaming.
Google Play is borrowing one of the Nintendo Switch’s most useful little tricks. A new Sidekick tool called Playbacks captures a short clip after something interesting has already happened, sparing players from running a screen recorder throughout an entire game.
Playbacks is part of Google Play Store v53.8 and keeps saved clips on the phone. Google first announced it earlier this month, but the new Play Store update marks its arrival for players. Anyone who has watched a perfect win vanish because the record button came too late already understands the appeal.