After the news that Star Wars Outlaws had barely surpassed 1 million copies sold in its first month and the delay of Assassin’s Creed Shadows, Ubisoft admitted that XDefiant has been a flop.
Released as a Call of Duty adversary, XDefiant quickly caught the gamer’s eye as Ubisoft’s title reportedly reached one million players in less than three hours after its release. As time went by, the game’s early success gradually faded away and now, according to Insider Gaming’s Tom Henderson, the game is struggling to maintain 20,000 concurrent players across all platforms.
It’s easy to understand why XDefiant has been if not a flop, an underwhelming video game. Let’s go through some of the reasons behind that, starting with expectations.
It’s important to understand that the game was never going to beat Call of Duty in the long term, especially with the recent hype caused by the upcoming release of Black Ops 6. With Activision’s next game being released in three weeks, it makes sense to see the numbers going down drastically. The ultimate goal of beating Call of Duty could take years and even an economic investment that Ubisoft may not be willing to take.
After the players realized that XDefiant wasn't going to keep up with the pace needed to beat a giant like Call of Duty, players quickly lost hope. It was not what they expected, and that's okay.
Another of XDefiant’s main struggles is its identity, with the game having problems creating its very own feeling. Players don’t feel anything unique and that prevents players from sticking to the game despite a potential lack of updates. If your game can’t go through a couple of months without new content, something is wrong, especially for new titles – if you don’t awaken something in people’s heads (and hearts) that other already existing games don’t, players will always go back to what they are used to.
For example, Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six Siege tactical side has created one of the biggest communities in gaming. Another example is Counter-Strike's competitiveness, which has built one of the biggest esports scenes in the industry, to not say the biggest. Every major game has its identity, something that makes them different – XDefiant hasn’t found that yet.
Although XDefiant’s idea of introducing characters from different Ubisoft titles, like Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six Siege or Far Cry, may be unique, it can also be confusing – in other words, chaos is king in XDefiant.
As players still work on figuring out the lobbies and the matchmaking, to not mention the game’s movement, the player’s experience may feel extremely chaotic. Changes introduced recently with the arrival of Season 2 may have solved some issues and added new content like Bomb mode; but it may all be too late.
XDefiant’s abilities and complicated loadouts make the experience very difficult to understand and dominate. Some players say that XDefiant isn’t just similar to Call of Duty but the perfect balance of Call of Duty and Overwatch. But, was that Ubisoft’s goal? We don’t think so.
Last but not least, Ubisoft’s current fame isn’t doing XDefiant any favor. It’s difficult for players to give XDefiant, a Ubisoft-owned title, a second or even third chance when the developer itself is being severely criticized on social media. The changes introduced in Season 2, including a new faction, new weapons, and many more additions, haven’t seen the numbers skyrocketing again.
With no major changes being introduced to the game until the end of the year, can XDefiant stay afloat until then?