Category: IGN

As any younger sibling who grew up on Mario platformers knows, Luigi is gaming’s ultimate Player 2. Nintendo’s green-capped member of the Mario Bros. has lived a lifetime in the shadow of his older twin Mario, only stepping out for a taste of solo stardom in his ghostbusting Luigi’s Mansion series.

As we move closer to Switch 2, we’re celebrating another console generation of Luigi and Player 2s everywhere with a complete list of every Luigi game on Switch.

How Many Luigi Games Are on Switch?

There are 17 games on Switch that let you play as Luigi. He’s the main character in only two games (Luigi’s Mansion 2 HD and Luigi’s Mansion 3) and the co-lead in one (Mario & Luigi: Brothership).

Every Luigi Game on Switch

Luigi’s Mansion 3 (2019)

Luigi’s first starring role on Switch was in Luigi’s Mansion 3, the third entry in the character’s only solo series to date. Luigi’s Mansion 3 sees our timid hero and his green gooey clone team up with Professor E. Gadd to battle ghosts and save his friends from King Boo’s haunted hotel.

Luigi’s Mansion 2 HD (2024)

Luigi’s Mansion 2 HD is a remake of the 2013 Nintendo 3DS game Luigi’s Mansion: Dark Moon. This second game in the spooky series sees Luigi ghostbusting his way through the mansions of Evershade Valley to once again capture King Boo and save his brother.

Mario & Luigi: Brothership (2024)

Sure, it’s not exclusively a ‘Luigi game,’ but Mario & Luigi: Brothership certainly puts the brothers on even footing. Brothership is the first release in the Mario & Luigi series since Paper Jam in 2014. Players take on the role of both brothers, who must traverse puzzles and platforming challenges to restore the kingdom of Concordia.

Every Other Game You Can Play as Luigi on Switch

Mario Kart 8 Deluxe (2017)

The first Switch game to feature Luigi as a playable character was Mario Kart 8 Deluxe. Luigi appears as a middleweight racer with a well-balanced stat distribution that slightly favors speed and handling. His appearance in an ad for the original Wii U version of Mario Kart 8 spawned the Luigi Death Stare meme.

Mario + Rabbids Kingdom Battle (2017)

Luigi next appeared in the Nintendo-Ubisoft collaboration Mario + Rabbids Kingdom Battle. The tactical RPG features both Luigi and Rabbid Luigi, a Rabbid who dresses (and often behaves) like his human counterpart, as possible party members.

Mario Tennis Aces (2018)

Luigi hit the court as one of 16 playable launch characters in 2018’s Mario Tennis Aces. As is often true for Luigi in Mario sports games, he’s a balanced, “all-around” character in Aces. His specialty shot, Pipe Cannon, blasts him into the air to set him up for a powerful spike.

Super Mario Party (2018)

Luigi is one of 20 playable characters in Super Mario Party. The younger of the Mario Bros. has appeared alongside his brother in every Mario Party game to date, including the two others further down this list. This is the first Mario Party game released for Switch and Nintendo’s ninth best-selling game on the platform, according to the company.

Super Smash Bros. Ultimate (2018)

Luigi appears in Super Smash Bros. Ultimate as an unlockable character. He is one of 12 characters to be playable in all five Smash games. According to LumiRank’s 2025 tier list, which compiled the opinions of 93 ranked Smash players, Luigi is an A+-tier fighter and the 18th best overall.

New Super Mario Bros. U Deluxe (2019)

Luigi is a playable character in the 2019 platformer New Super Mario Bros. U Deluxe. This is an expanded version of NSMBU for Wii U that includes the expansion New Super Luigi U. Luigi stars as the main character in this expansion, which incorporates his higher jump, remixes levels from the base game, and adds a 100-second timer to each level.

Super Mario Maker 2 (2019)

Alongside Mario, Toad, and Toadette, Luigi is one of four playable characters in Super Mario Maker 2. The level-building platformer allows players to create their own Mario levels using assets from Super Mario Bros., Super Mario Bros. 3, Super Mario World, New Super Mario Bros. U, and Super Mario 3D World.

Super Mario 3D World + Bowser’s Fury (2021)

Like the original Wii U release, Super Mario 3D World + Bowser’s Fury can be played entirely as Luigi. Here, he controls similarly to Mario, albeit with a slightly higher jump and slightly less traction, making him play a bit more ‘floaty’ and ‘slippery’ than his red-capped counterpart.

Mario Golf: Super Rush (2021)

Luigi hit the links with Mario and friends in Mario Golf: Super Rush. One of 22 playable characters, he boasts decent control and excellent speed stats, making him a great option for Super Rush’s new Speed Golf mode. His special shot, Ice Flower Freeze, freezes the ground upon the ball’s impact, creating a hazardous area for opponents.

Mario Party Superstars (2021)

Luigi returns for the second iteration of Mario Party on Switch: Mario Party Superstars. Unlike Super Mario Party before it, Superstars is not an original game but rather a modern collection of minigames, boards, and mechanics from the series’ past.

Mario Strikers: Battle League Football (2022)

Mario Strikers: Battle League Football, the latest Mario soccer/football game, features Luigi as one of 16 playable characters. Luigi is a well-balanced footballer who excels in technique, a skill that determines a character’s ability to dribble, curve their shot, and shoot accurately.

Mario + Rabbids Sparks of Hope (2022)

Luigi (and Rabbid Luigi) returned for Ubisoft and Nintendo’s tactical sequel, Mario + Rabbids Sparks of Hope. Luigi is labeled a Sneak Attacker due to his ranged weaponry and low health.

Super Mario Bros. Wonder (2023)

Super Mario Bros. Wonder, the latest 2D Mario platformer, features Luigi as a playable alternative to Mario. The difference between the two characters here is purely aesthetic, as the Mario Bros. play identically to one another.

Super Mario Party Jamboree (2024)

Unsurprisingly, Luigi is playable in Super Mario Party Jamboree, the biggest and arguably best game in Nintendo’s flagship party series. In addition to being a playable character, Luigi appears as part of Jamboree’s new Buddy mechanic, where he has the chance to change a player’s dice rolls from their initial numbers to 10s.

What’s Next for Luigi?

The next time you’ll be able to play as Luigi is a new Mario Kart game, expected to release alongside the Switch 2, that features double the usual amount of racers. Yes, that means 24 racers on each track. Otherwise, I’m sure Mario will bring Luigi along for whatever his next adventure is. Plenty more games are rumored to be releasing with Nintendo’s next console generation, and the next updates will likely come out of a Nintendo Direct scheduled for April 2.

Jordan covers games, shows, and movies as a freelance writer for IGN.

Some of you may have fond memories of a 1986 game called Fireball Island, which was notable for incorporating physical obstacles into play, in the form of marbles that rolled down random paths on the 3D board, knocking over player figures. That got a middling 2018 rework in the form of Fireball Island: The Curse of Vul-Kar (see it at Amazon), but if you want similar game concepts at a cheaper price, married to a blockbuster movie licence, then Jumanji Stampede is the game for you. And right now it’s on sale at Amazon for just $9.06, which is less than the cost of lunch.

Save 46% Off Jumanji Stampede

BioWare has almost entirely moved on from Dragon Age: The Veilguard, but that isn’t stopping its remaining team from sneakily adding a small DLC weapons pack to the game.

Dragon Age fans gathered in shock after the RPG’s Steam page was updated to include free add-on content in the form of the Rook’s Weapons Appearance Offer yesterday. It’s not much but still more than welcome considering EA had previously signaled that Dragon Age: The Veilguard wouldn’t receive much support in the future. As its fifth patch promised that future updates would largely focus on tackling game-breaking bugs all the way back in January, brand-new content feels like a bit of a miracle – even if it’s not much.

Strangely, the Rook’s Weapons Appearances bundle is only available to those who currently own the game and those who purchase it on PC by April 8, 2025. There’s no description of what is specifically included in the bundle either, though players have worked out that it grants access to a set of Watchful skins that can be accessed in their Rook’s in-game room. It’s unclear if the offer will become available for PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X | S versions of the game.

“Even if these appearances aren’t the most, uh, beautiful things ever,” one Steam review says, “they do give spooky eldritch horror vibes!”

“It’s cosmetic DLC, but it’s essentially free DLC for a game that’s practically no longer getting newer content,” one Redditor said. “I’ll live with that.”

Dragon Age: The Veilguard launched to positive reviews from critics in October but, according to EA, failed to “resonate with a broad enough audience.” Lead members of its team announced they would be leaving BioWare in late January as much of its staff was either laid off or moved to other roles within the company. At the time, EA told IGN that the studio had shifted to put its “full focus” on the next Mass Effect.

Dragon Age: The Veilguard joined the lineup of PlayStation Plus March 2025 titles, just four months removed from its launch. No other plans for its future have been announced.

Michael Cripe is a freelance contributor with IGN. He’s best known for his work at sites like The Pitch, The Escapist, and OnlySP. Be sure to give him a follow on Bluesky (@mikecripe.bsky.social) and Twitter (@MikeCripe).

Xenoblade Chronicles X: Definitive Edition is out now for the Nintendo Switch, and European fans are picking up their copies, turning them over, and getting a bit of a surprise when they see the PEGI Rating lists “Sex” among the labeled content warnings.

As spotted by NintendoLife, fans noticed a difference between the Wii U and Switch versions of Xenoblade Chronicles X. While the original Wii U version from 2015 is rated PEGI 12 for Violence and Bad Language, the Definitive Edition on the Nintendo Switch retains a PEGI 12 rating but adds Sex to its labels.

Naturally, the addition of that label has spurred confusion. As one fan on X/Twitter put it bluntly: “WHAT DID THEY ADD??”

WHAT DID THEY ADD?? pic.twitter.com/hUVx0qjOge

— molly! (@starfallblossom) March 20, 2025

The label didn’t escape the notice of players across various forums, who promptly began to jokingly speculate about the actual content differences. “First game came out before they invented sex,” one user said.

Granted, there are outfits that can be a little form-fitting, but the outright “Sex” label was a little surprising. As it turns out, the answer might be fairly mundane.

Over on the PEGI website, the ratings board specifically notes the PEGI 12 rating is for “moderate violence, use of bad language and sexual innuendo.” The content-specific issues dive deeper into the details; here’s the passage, with the innuendo portion bolded for emphasis:

This game contains depictions of non-realistic violence towards human characters. Throughout the game the player and their party will be struck and hurt by enemies. Human characters grunt in pain and can be knocked back or down to the ground with no visible blood or injury. This game also features depictions of realistic violence to fantasy characters. One cut-scene in the game depicts a character impaling an alien creature, accompanied by blood effects. This game contains the use of bad language including ‘bastard’, ‘piss’ and ‘asshole’. Players can choose text and voice lines for characters to use in combat. Some of the female options have sexual innuendos, such as: “I’m going in for a quickie”

The Wii U rating notes none of this, though users on Reddit have noted that Xenoblade Chronicles X’s script did contain at least a few mentions of reproduction and suggestive language. Considering the PEGI rating itself has changed, this seems like a reflection of the ever-changing decision-making around ratings boards and labels, rather than some notion of a drastically tone-altering addition in the Definitive Edition’s expanded content.

For our review of Xenoblade Chronicles X, we gave the updated version of Monolith Soft’s sci-fi open-world RPG a 9, saying: “Xenoblade Chronicles X was already one of the Wii U’s best games, and this Definitive Edition does more than enough to justify another trip to planet Mira.”

Eric is a freelance writer for IGN.

It’s time for a new booster set in Pokémon TCG Pocket, and it’s introducing quite a bit to the game when it arrives. Shining Revelry, the next themed booster pack for Pokémon TCG Pocket, arrives on March 27, 2025, introducing Shiny Pokémon, ranked matches, and the Paldea region’s trainers and Pokémon.

As part of the new booster, Shining Revelry will introduce Shiny variants of popular Pokémon, including Charizard ex, Lucario ex, and Pachirisu. You can see a preview of what they’ll look like in the latest Pokémon TCG Pocket teaser below:

The Shiny variants not only add some extra sparkle and shine to these Pokémon, but also change their color schemes. For Pokémon TCG Pocket, the Shiny Pokémon cards will sparkle when tilted, adding to the effect. Fans of the Shiny look can also get a Shiny Charizard display board and binder starting on April 1.

Themed booster sets, like Mythical Island or Triumphant Light, are typically smaller sets with fewer cards compared to larger sets like Genetic Apex or Space-Time Smackdown. That doesn’t mean they aren’t making some interesting additions to the sets, though. Shining Revelry will bring the Paldea region from Pokémon Scarlet and Violet to Pokémon TCG Pocket, introducing the likes of Tatsugiri and Sprigatito, as well as the trainer Iono.

Ranked matches are also launching on March 27, letting players battle and earn emblems based on their end-of-season rank to display on their profile. The first season will run from March 27 to April 26.

Recently, the Pokemon TCG Pocket team confirmed it would be changing the trading system, which has earned the ire of players looking to exchange cards and round out their collections. The actual changes will be rolling out gradually though, so we’ll see if the suprisingly robust drop for Shining Revelry mollifies the community or not.

Eric is a freelance writer for IGN.

I expected Pokémon TCG restocks in 2025, but not this soon. While everyone scrambles for Prismatic Evolutions and floods paid Discord servers hunting for Rival Destinies, the smart move is picking up older sets from the Scarlet & Violet and Sword & Shield eras before they disappear—especially now that Amazon just got a massive restock.

You won’t find Prismatic Evolutions or much Surging Sparks stock just yet, but for collectors, this is a gold mine. ETBs, Big Boxes, Booster Bundles, and more are all here—straight from Amazon Global. That means stock has been pulled from the UK and other regions to ensure wider availability.

This is exactly what the community needs: a flood of inventory that makes botting and scalping far less appealing. I’ve dug through everything, and just to make things easier, sorted it all by category alongside a handy TL;DR just below.

Pokémon TCG: Elite Trainer Boxes

All of these ETBs are harder to come by thanks to Pokémania 2025. There’s some amazing cards to be found in these sets, from Greninja Secret Art Rare (214/167) found in Twilight Masquerade to The Loyal Three Secret Art Rare set found in Shrouded Fable.

Pokémon TCG: Booster Bundles and Blisters

Surging Sparks Booster Bundle is the biggest restock here thanks to the infamous Pikachu ex Secret Illustration Rare (238/191) and the sets other amazin cards such as Latias ex Special Illustration Rare (239/191) and Milotic ex Special Illustration Rare (237/191). It’s also a great time to snap up from Brilliant Stars boosters, with chances of pulling Charizard V Alternate Art (154/172) and the stunning trainer gallery sub-set.

Pokémon TCG: Big Box Products

Whilst these are the most awkward thing to display or store for collectors, there’s some cool promo cards and accessories for TCG players. There’s even some discounts knocking around, such as the Paradox Fury Premium collection down 12% at $60.11. This is probably one of the better boxes to buy from this restock as it’s a 2024 Amazon holiday exclusive.

Pokémon TCG: Tins

There’s a collectors scene for just the tins people, and they come in handy for storing bulk, dice, sleeves and whgatever else trainers need to their battles.

A good tip here is to buy anything with a Pokémon V card as their promo card. This means you’ll get Sword and Shield era booster packs inside, which are going to be harder and harder to find as we move into the second half of 2025.

If you looking for frequent updates on Pokémon TCG products, I’m constantly updating Where To Buy Prismatic Evolutions, Prismatic Evolutions Super Premium Collection, and Best Pokémon TCG deals.

Christian Wait is a contributing freelancer for IGN covering everything collectable and deals. Christian has over 7 years of experience in the Gaming and Tech industry with bylines at Mashable and Pocket-Tactics. Christian also makes hand-painted collectibles for Saber Miniatures. Christian is also the author of “Pokemon Ultimate Unofficial Gaming Guide by GamesWarrior”. Find Christian on X @ChrisReggieWait.

The first big update for Monster Hunter Wilds looms on the horizon, and next week, Capcom will host a showcase to spotlight what’s in store for Title Update 1 in Monster Hunter Wilds.

The Monster Hunter Wilds Showcase airs on March 25 at 7am PT / 10am ET on the Monster Hunter Twitch channel. Hosted by producer Ryozo Tsujimoto, the showcase will spotlight what’s arriving alongside returning monster Mizutsune.

Join us March 25 at 7am PT/2pm GMT for the Monster Hunter Wilds Showcase, hosted by producer Ryozo Tsujimoto! We’ll be detailing the first Free Title Update coming in early April, which includes Mizutsune and a host of other new additions.

Watch here:https://t.co/WbntyFSOZe pic.twitter.com/rTuHrT4vAw

— Monster Hunter (@monsterhunter) March 21, 2025

Currently, there’s no exact date locked in for Title Update 1 outside a general “early April” window. A firm launch date for the first big content drop of Monster Hunter Wilds would be one of the big takeaways players would likely want to see in the spotlight.

As for content, we know Mizutsune — a leviathan monster with dangerous bubbles — will return for Monster Hunter Wilds. We also know Capcom plans to add a new challenge as well as a “new place to meet, communicate, have meals together and more with other hunters,” specifically for those who have completed the main story.

What’s on players’ longer wishlist for Title Update 1? Layered weapons, or changing the appearance of your weapon without altering its stats, is a repeated ask. Additional camera options and other quality-of-life features are also sensical options.

There are also still hopes that future updates will continue to fine-tune and optimize Monster Hunter Wilds, as the PC version saw quite a few complaints and concerns in Wilds’ launch window.

Mostly, hunters seem keen on hunting a new monster, getting some new challenges, and having more to dig into with Monster Hunter Wilds. The latest in Capcom’s long-running monster-fighting series brought in some big numbers with its launch, and with Title Update 1, the company will be setting the cadence for how it moves forward.

To help get your Monster Hunter Wilds adventure started, take a look at what Monster Hunter Wilds doesn’t tell you, and a guide to all 14 weapon types in the game. We’ve also got a detailed MH Wilds walkthrough in progress, a MH Wilds multiplayer guide to explain how to play with friends, and if you’ve played one of the open betas, here’s how to transfer your MH Wilds Beta character over.

Eric is a freelance writer for IGN.

Kaiserpunk has an immediately interesting premise: rebuilding society from the ashes of an alternate timeline World War I that raged so much longer and more mercilessly that it left the survivors in a post-apocalyptic struggle for survival. When it leans into being a city builder with a roaring 20s flair, that scenario can really shine. But the diet grand strategy game playing out on its dissonant strategic map, as well as a host of technical issues that I could maybe forgive if this were an Early Access launch instead of the full thing, make me wish I’d perished in 1916.

Each game of Kaiserpunk begins with laying out a few ramshackle houses and modest farms on one of its varied but fairly flat maps based on real-world locations, which range from Seattle, Washington to Sydney, Australia. It’s neat that the lower-tier buildings look like they were made from salvaged materials, often sporting brand names of forgotten, pre-war businesses. Each lot is a quaint and stylish little diorama, and I enjoyed watching my rough-and-tumble laborers go about their days.

This continues up the social ladder as you keep adding more specialized and higher-paid citizens, with the most privileged residences creating almost idyllic early 20th Century neighborhoods that could make me forget the world fell apart for but a moment. This sense of transforming the ruined landscape into a place worth living in again is satisfying, and there’s a deep and decently entertaining web of production chains underneath it all, too.

The series Kaiserpunk is most comparable to is Anno, in that the goal is to work your way up from vegetable gardens to eventually manufacturing your own televisions and radios, supporting a growing middle and upper class with increasingly lavish and specific desires that must be maintained. Especially at smaller scales, I found a good amount of enjoyment in this urban planning. And it’s pretty cool that when I shape my society through the different settlement tiers by selecting policies, my main government building changes to reflect my values.

But while there are dozens of resources and all kinds of unlockable buildings – from schools to clinics – to better the lives of my people, those same systems fall flat in other ways that make the world less believable. Nobody minds living next to a steel mill, for example – not even the wealthiest citizens. Everyone has a desire for health and education, but this is simply dealt with by plopping public service buildings. The smog from factories never causes health to decline, from what I could tell. This encourages building hodgepodge settlements that don’t really look like or develop in the way real cities do.

The whole thing comes apart even more when you get out onto the strategic map. For one thing, Kaiserpunk seems to have no idea what scale it wants to tell stories on. In my city, I’m concerned with whether my 200 machinists have enough gramophones to fulfill their luxury needs. But then on the strategic map, “Central Europe” is a single, indivisible political region. It’s very similar to the map from the board game Risk. This really does not mesh at all.

If they wanted to have a strategic layer, they should have gone for something much more modest. A lot of the theming is already very British, so why not zoom in and spend just as much time on a post-apocalyptic UK? Why would these devastated city-states rising from the ashes be out trying to conquer the world like it’s Hearts of Iron?

And the strategic systems don’t do much for me either. For one thing, the turn-based battle animations are comical, almost slapstick, and I don’t feel like that was intentional. The mechanics are complex but cumbersome, and don’t provide a lot of information after the fact on why you won or lost. Things like terrain type and your ability to supply your armies can eventually change the course of a war, but it’s all kind of half-baked and impenetrable.

The big picture comes across like there was a strong idea for an interwar city builder that then had a second, half-finished game nailed onto it. You could lose this whole world map layer and I honestly think it would be a better experience. Maybe you could abstract the defense industry, which eventually has you building your own tanks and artillery, as something you have to do to secure your borders rather than worrying about conquest. There are diplomatic and scientific victory paths if you don’t want to focus on guns and bombs, but you can’t really ignore the world map if you want to be successful at either of them.

The AI on the default Normal difficulty setting is fairly ruthless, too. As a new player, I felt like they were always way ahead of me by the time I ran into them, which is discouraging. When I’m playing a city builder, I don’t want my life to be completely without struggle. But since I’m getting plenty of that trying to provide for my people anyway, the idea that I can be vastly outpaced by the AI if I don’t develop my industries as quickly and efficiently as possible seems excessive. It’s not tuned well, especially when you’re first learning the ropes.

And that’s all before we even get to the technical issues. Like I said, if this were an Early Access game, I might cut it a little more slack. But for what’s supposed to be a finished product, the polish simply isn’t here. There’s a lot of little technical things that come across as sloppy, like the fact that the resource counters on the strategic map don’t update in real time when the clock is going. You have to close the map and open it again.

You can’t click on different columns to sort the resource screen, which is very frustrating given how many of them there are. The tooltip for population needs fulfillment doesn’t provide enough information, so I frequently found myself having to tediously go around clicking on individual houses to figure out what people wanted more of like I was doing a door-to-door survey.

The economy balance can be quite odd at the higher levels too, where simply building a single high-rise full of specialists will print money even if they’re unhappy, but then trying to provide for their needs ends up being more expensive overall. It’s supposed to be the other way around, where happier citizens pay more taxes. But the balance doesn’t always swing that way.

Most of all, though, it’s pretty buggy. All the way up until the day before this review, I was running into multiple issues with saves suddenly deciding not to load after I’d played a given city for a long time. I’m glad this seems to have gotten a last minute fix, but that’s the ultimate vibe killer when you’ve put more than 25 hours into a run. At one point, when I hadn’t met any other factions yet, I got a notification that “the enemy” had launched a firebombing campaign on my city that resulted in more than a dozen buildings randomly bursting into flames. Who did this, exactly? Some raiders hiding out in a canyon down the road?

The latest in Ubisoft’s long line of stealth-action open worlds, Assassin’s Creed Shadows, is finally here. But where does it rank in the series? We’re asking you to make that decision. There have been over 30 games released under the Assassin’s Creed banner, but we’re just including the “mainline games” here, so no mobile, side-scrolling, VR entries, or spin-offs like Bloodlines or Liberation here, I’m afraid.

AC started all the way back in 2007 when Desmond Miles stepped into the Animus to fill the shoes of his ancestor Altaïr, and now finds itself in 16th-century Japan 18 years later as players take control of Naoe and Yasuke. This latest adventure is the 14th in the core series, and I’ve had a go at ranking them via one of our IGN Tier Lists, based purely on my personal enjoyment of each game. Take a look at my tier list here:

Assassin’s Creed Shadows saw over 1 million players on launch day, Ubisoft has announced.

The game released on PC, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series X and S on March 20, and just before 4pm in Canada, Ubisoft took to social media to say it had crossed the 1 million player mark.

“It’s not even 4pm here in Canada and Assassin’s Creed Shadows has already passed 1 million players!” Ubisoft said.

“Thank YOU from the bottom of our hearts for joining this adventure in Feudal Japan. We are beyond excited to start this journey with you!”

While 1 million players on launch day is an impressive achievement, it’s difficult to gauge success when Ubisoft itself hasn’t offered a sales figure or indeed a sales target.

What we do know is that Assassin’s Creed Shadows is the top-selling video game globally on Steam right now. Valve’s chart sorts products by revenue, so we can say Ubisoft’s game is currently bringing in more money than any other on the platform.

We also have early days Steam concurrent figures. According to official stats from Valve’s platform, Assassin’s Creed Shadows hit a peak player concurrent figure of 41,412 on Steam on launch day. Assassin’s Creed Shadows released on a Thursday, so it is expected that that figure will grow as we head into the game’s first weekend on sale. We’ll have a better picture of its performance on Steam next week and in the weeks ahead. Neither Sony nor Microsoft make player numbers public.

For some context, BioWare’s single-player RPG Dragon Age: The Veilguard launched on Steam on Thursday, October 31, 2024, and saw a peak of 70,414 players on Valve’s platform.

There is enormous pressure on Assassin’s Creed Shadows to do well for Ubisoft globally after a number of delays and the sales failure of last year’s Star Wars Outlaws. Indeed, Ubisoft has suffered a number of high-profile flops, layoffs, studio closures, and game cancellations in the run up to Assassin’s Creed Shadows’ release.

Assassin’s Creed Shadows has also endured a number of controversies, not least in Japan. Yesterday, IGN confirmed that Ubisoft had quietly released a day-one patch for Assassin’s Creed Shadows that made a number of important changes seemingly in response to concern from some Japanese politicians about in-game temples and shrines.

In a remarkable exchange this week, Japanese politician and member of the House of Councillors of Japan, Hiroyuki Kada, raised the issue of Assassin’s Creed Shadows in an official government meeting, and Shigeru Ishiba, the Prime Minister of Japan, responded.

On Steam at least, Assassin’s Creed Shadows is going down very well with players. It has a ‘very positive’ user review rating, with 82% of the near 4,000 user reviews marked as positive. IGN’s Assassin’s Creed Shadows review returned an 8/10. We said: “By sharpening the edges of its existing systems, Assassin’s Creed Shadows creates one of the best versions of the open-world style it’s been honing for the last decade.”

Ubisoft’s founding Guillemot family and largest shareholder have reportedly been exploring talks with Chinese mega-corp Tencent and other investors on a buyout deal that would let them preserve control.

Wesley is the UK News Editor for IGN. Find him on Twitter at @wyp100. You can reach Wesley at wesley_yinpoole@ign.com or confidentially at wyp100@proton.me.