Ubisofts says Assassin's Creed Nexus VR didn’t sell well, but is that really any wonder?

Most of the best VR headsets available right now are geared towards entertainment and the Quest 3 makes no exception. Some of the most impressive games for the Quest 3 take advantage of the system's MR capabilities, but that doesn't mean that VR is left behind.

Tons of examples for great, new VR titles exist, but very few of them are of AAA or even AA quality. If you try to count the ones that came out in the last six months or so, you won’t need more than one hand’s worth of fingers.

And if you stop to think about why, I think that it becomes rather obvious. And a great — albeit, unfortunate — example of that is Assassin's Creed Nexus. The game was released as a Quest 3 exclusive on November 16 and Ubisoft is already disappointed in the low sales count.


At this point, I believe that even people living under rocks hear the occasional “Nothing is true. Everything is permitted.”, but if this is your first time hearing about Assassin's Creed Nexus: it’s a VR-exclusive stealth-action hybrid that lets you play as Ezio, because everyone loves him. And then there’s other assassins too.

There’s no question about it: the game has very high production value and of the sort that VR enthusiasts rarely get to see. And for $34.99, it makes for a no-brainer purchase: most games of this price point don’t offer such a rich experience that lasts for upwards of ten hours.

But with this being a Ubisoft title, it all makes sense. Most of the textures already existed from previous games and I can’t imagine that too much “legwork” had to be done for Nexus. I’m sure that it was still time consuming, but I’m willing to bet that Ubisoft’s clever use of resources helped with the low price point.

Yes, but:




Says Ubisoft CEO, Yves Guillemot. And I’m not surprised at all, honestly.

Here’s the thing: the Assassin's Creed franchise rose to glory in the now distant 2007 on consoles. With pretty much annual releases since then, popularity only grew on PC as well. And do you know what the PC and console gaming crowd is used to?

Playing while sitting down and enjoying its high-stakes conspiracy theories without much beyond a keystroke. Don’t get me wrong: I’m certain that a lot of these folk exercise regularly and I’m not pointing any fingers. I’m saying that these games are a form of de-stress and relaxation.

I mean, climbing a mountain in Minecraft isn’t at all the same as in real life. And VR? Well, its selling point is “immersion” after all. And assassinating someone in VR takes a bit more effort than about five button presses on a controller or keyboard.

And while I’m not here to say that either is better than the other, I am trying to say that a change like this alters the concept of “fun” dramatically. And that’s why we play games, right?



Here’s the deal: not every existing AAA franchise will translate well to VR and not every VR game will remain fun on a flatscreen. This is just the nature of the technology and I suspected that AC: Nexus won’t perform all too well for this very reason.

After all, the joy of playing as Ezio came from feeling the effortless grace of his actions. In VR, said actions are involved at best and cause motion sickness at worst. And if you don’t find either to be much fun, then that’s only understandable.

It sounds like Ubisoft won’t be planning another VR game in the AC series and while that may seem like a bummer, it might be a good thing. In order to create a good VR game, you need to make the VR-ness of it take center stage.

Who knows? We may become witness to the birth of an entirely new franchise just because of that. And I think we’d be better off for it.