Assassin's Creed II Stabs Its Way to Success With 1.6 Million Units Sold

From DailyTech: Two weeks ago, the launch of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 posted monstrous sales to the delight of publisher Activision and developer Infinity Ward. CoD:MW2 raked in over $310M USD in the U.S. and UK in only 24 hours, moving approximately 4.7 million units. That tidy sum in cold hard cash puts even movie industry's biggest one-day opening ever, Twilight: New Moon (approximately $72M USD) to shame.

Now, rival publisher Ubisoft has a similar success to report. Its new game, Assassin's Creed 2, developed by Ubisoft Montreal, has posted better-than-expected sales, selling 1.6 million copies in its first week. With many of the sales occurring at $59.99 mark (Amazon.com and Newegg.com have discounted it to $55.99, and $54.99, respectively), that indicates the game likely has pulled in close to $100M USD in sales.

Cheers Ubisoft in a released statement, "This represents 32 percent growth over the first week sales of [the original] Assassin's Creed. Launched in November 2007, Assassin's Creed remains the fastest selling new video game intellectual property ever in the US."

The sales beat the expectations of most analysts, who were predicting lower sales. Analysts had stated that Ubisoft would be unlikely to meet its sales targets in the current economic climate

As with sales, critical reception of Ubisoft new blockbuster has been extremely impressive, if a bit behind Activision's juggernaut. Assassin's Creed II earned an average scores of 92.33 percent (Xbox 360) and 91.20 percent (PS3), just below Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2's high bar of 93.4 (Xbox 360) and 93.90 (PS3).

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