‘Ghost Of Yotei’ Outsold PS5 ‘Assassin’s Creed Shadows’ In Three Weeks, Says Report

Ghost of Yotei is a hit, matching or potentially exceeding the sales of its predecessor, Ghost of Tsushima, say analysts. But it was not the only samurai/ninja game released this year, paired with Ubisoft’s Assassin’s Creed Shadows. But it appears Yotei was the more anticipated pick, by far.

New estimates from analytics firm Alinea indicate that Ghost of Yotei, which was released October 2, has already outsold Assassin’s Creed Shadows on PS5, which was released March 20. That’s three weeks to beat a game that was out seven months ago, and reportedly did perform well initially in the context of Ubisoft AC games, though it has trailed off since. PS5 had the largest share of its players, 56%, the rest split between Xbox and Steam. At least for now, Shadows has outsold Yotei overall, where Yotei is not coming to Xbox, and if it does come to Steam, that probably won’t be for at least 1-2 years, if that. But you can see the trendline here.

Ghost of Yotei scored an 86 on Metacritic from critics and has an 8.2 user score. Assassin’s Creed Shadows has an 81 and a 6.2, respectively. Both were the targets of video game culture wars, Shadows mainly for its use of the historic black samurai Yasuke, and Yotei for…it’s not quite clear, having a female protagonist and controversial left-wing comments or two from devs/actors, it seems. Shadows had the bigger dust-up, however, and a new report says the reaction to Shadows caused Ubisoft, in part, to scrap a Civil War-era game starring a freed slave.

Does Ghost of Yotei being a big hit mean that we’re getting Ghost of [Insert Island] in another five years? Developer Sucker Punch has been open about considering that, or heading back 20 years to something lighter, a reprisal of Sly Cooper. It’s not clear if those are their only options, or just the top 2. As good as Tsushima and Yotei are, I think it may be time to move on from that series for a while. It just seems like it’s sort of spent from a gameplay perspective after a bigger world and more weapons. I don’t think we need an even bigger world and even more weapons just to add things to add things.

Even if these estimates are not exact, wait another week or two, and Yotei will almost certainly be on top, regardless. This does not make Shadows a “failure,” but if these two games are going head to head, it’s clear there’s a winner in terms of player interest; it’s just that Yotei is very limited by PS5 hardware, something that seems to be bothering Sony more and more these days.

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