14 DAY TRIAL // Video game publisher Ubisoft announces that its recently launched Watch Dogs video game has managed to sell 4 million units during its launch week and that it has set records in both the United States and the United Kingdom.
Darren Bowen, a sales director at the UK division of the company, tells Eurogamer that, "The results we achieved in the first week of launch are amazing and prove Ubisoft’s commitment to developing new blockbuster IP and thoroughly new-gen experiences."
Watch Dogs has been launched on the PC, the PlayStation 4 from Sony, the Xbox One from Microsoft and current-gen consoles.
A Wii U version of the title will be launched before the end of the year and Ubisoft has already suggested that a sequel is in the early stages of the development process.
The sales performance comes on the heels of a solid number of pre-orders and emphasizes the quality of the game experience, which proved attractive to players even after an initial delay.
Watch Dogs uses an open world structure and allows gamers to explore a futuristic version of Chicago, which is controlled by a sophisticated central processing Artificial Intelligence.
The player becomes Aiden Pearce, a capable hacker who needs to hunt down a series of individuals in order to get revenge for what happens to the ones he loves.
The game comments on themes like the power of surveillance and the moral choices involved in the hacking process.
Since Watch Dogs was launched, it has had a lot of problems on the PC, mostly linked to the video drivers and to the uPlay service from Ubisoft, which also affected the logins on home consoles.
The publisher has been working hard to solve them, but plenty of gamers are still reporting issues at the moment.
Watch Dogs is a big bet for Ubisoft, which seems to have paid off despite the delay and the lower than expected graphics quality, especially when compared to the footage shown during E3.
The French company has managed to create a number of new intellectual properties in the last few years and Watch Dogs will probably become an annual release, alongside the likes of Assassin's Creed.
Ubisoft has promised that it will deliver patches for the video game in order to make sure that all problems that the community flags down are eliminated and downloadable content is also probably in the works, although official plans have not been announced.