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Assassin's Creed Shadows is Europe's best-selling new title so far, according to new data
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Assassin’s Creed Shadows is Europe’s best-selling new title so far, according to new data

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Assassin’s Creed Shadows is Europe’s best-selling new game so far this year, according to new data from GSD.

As reported by The Games Business, Ubisoft’s latest title beat the likes of Monster Hunter Wilds, Split Fiction, and Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2.

Split Fiction is the best-selling IP of 2025 so far, which reached No.6 on the Top 20 chart.

This comes from data collected by GSD up until July 28, 2025. However, this excludes Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 as the game’s publisher does not share its sales data with GSD.

As for Nintendo titles, the publisher also doesn’t share its digital sales data.

Looking at the overall chart, Monster Hunter Wilds ranked at No.7, Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 was at No.10, Elder Scrolls 4: Oblivion Remastered came in at No.11 followed by Elden Ring Nightrein at No.13.

While AC Shadows is the best-selling new game, EA Sport FC 25 took the ultimate top spot following its release last September.

Elsewhere, 71 million PC and console games have been sold across the continent so far this year, reflecting a 6% decline year-over-year, according to additional data shared by GSD analyst Sam Naji.

This included 52 million digital games (down 3%) and 19.7 million physical games (down 9%).

During the first 19 weeks of 2025, games spending dropped 2% to €1.33 billion, with unit sales declining 9%. This was reportedly “due to an 8% increase in the average selling price of games” with “gamers spending on average €29 per game” compared to €27 last year.

Digital spending rose by 8% (compared to a 6% drop in unit sales) due to a 15% rise “in the average selling price of digital games” from €22 to €29.

Physical spending was down 16%, with unit sales declining a further 17%. The price of physical games has slightly increased by 2% compared to the same period last year from €39 to €40.

Here are the top 20 games in Europe from GSD data collected until July 28, 2025:

Position
Title

1
EA Sports FC 25 (Electronic Arts)

2
Assassin’s Creed Shadows (Ubisoft)

3
Grand Theft Auto 5 (Rockstar)

4
Red Dead Redemption 2 (Rockstar)

5
Hogwarts Legacy (Warner Bros)

6
Split Fiction (EA)

7
Monster Hunter Wilds (Capcom)

8
Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 (Activision Blizzard)

9
Mario Kart World (Nintendo)*

10
Kingdom Come Deliverance 2 (Plaion)

11
The Elder Scrolls 4: Oblivion Remastered (Bethesda)

12
Star Wars Battlefront 2 (EA)

13
Elden Ring: Nightrein (Bandai Namco)

14
It Takes Two (EA)

15
Grand Theft Auto Online (Rockstar)

16
NBA 2K25 (2K Games)

17
F1 25 (EA)

18
Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six: Siege (Ubisoft)

19
Mario Kart 8: Deluxe (Nintendo)*

20
Battlefield 1 (EA)

*Digital data unavailable

Games bundled with hardware is included (including digital and physical games)

Data covers Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, and United Kingdom.



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Assassin's Creed Shadows' latest update brings in a nightmare difficulty mode and another weird collab
Game Updates

Assassin’s Creed Shadows’ latest update brings in a nightmare difficulty mode and another weird collab

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Another month, another Assassin’s Creed Shadows update, again one that comes with a list of quality of life changes, but also one that comes with another surprising collaboration. Let’s start with that one, which is, weirdly, a new story pack made in collaboration with Critical Role, the wildly popular actual play series. For some context, Critical Role did an official Assassin’s Creed themed oneshot a little while back. In said oneshot, Hi-Fi Rush’s Robbie Daymond played a character called Rufino, who’s being added into the game through this new mission in update 1.0.6.


“Rufino, an old friend of Tomiko and Heiji, calls in a life debt after uncovering a deadly conspiracy,” Ubisoft explains. “While working as a translator, he discovered evidence that a secretive organization has been hiring assassins to eliminate influential commoners. Now, he turns to Naoe and Yasuke for help in stopping these killers.” Completing this quest nets you Rufino as a new ally, and you’ll get the Critical Role logo as a banner.


Right, now the regular update stuff. A new nightmare difficult setting is now available with this update, which does a few different things. Defensive options are less effective in this mode, and you need to pull off perfect parries for them to deflect the hit fully. Enemy AI is “smarter, faster, and more aggressive in a variety of circumstances, including detection.” And combat resources are harder to find too.


For those of you oddly desperate to wear your headgear during cutscenes, that’ll be an option now too, and there’s toggles for specific types of VFX that you can turn off and on as well. The regional alert system available in castles has been expanded to the whole province on top of that, meaning that when you repeatedly attack “Civilians or Military units outside Castles, the alarm can be triggered, and a group of Guardians will hunt you in the world.” There’s also three different camera presets when on a horse, for your riding pleasure.


Lastly, for us here in PC land, there’s an Ultra Low visual quality level – you can read about the exact specs that’s catered to over on the post about the update, alongside the list of fixes and tweaks that you mostly don’t need to worry about.





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Assassin's Creed Shadows: How To Defeat Mitsuhide
Game Reviews

Assassin’s Creed Shadows: How To Defeat Mitsuhide

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It’s finally come to this, the final members of the Shinbakufu are in your sights, and while this isn’t the end of Naoe and Yasuke’s journey—do not get me started on the endgame thing with Hanzo, we don’t have four hours to spend being angry—it’s certainly the bang the game deserves to go out on. Get in loser, we’ve got a traitor to kill.

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Preparation

Screenshot: Ubisoft / Justin Clark / Kotaku

Sure, it’s not technically required to finish out Naoe and Yasuke’s personal journey quests to take on this last mission, but just from a narrative and rule-of-cool standpoint, they’re worth the effort. Naoe’s missions finally establish a proper link to the rest of the Assassin’s Creed series, and also gets her some proper beautiful Assassin garb to run around in. Meanwhile, Yasuke’s stuff doesn’t really affect the endgame, but it does let you get your Django Unchained on, and hunt down the Portuguese slavers who got him in this mess. Seriously, these are probably the best and most badass missions in the game, and the reward is the best armor Yasuke can own. Past those, though, you already have everything you need. Let’s just finish this.

The Mission: “Topple the Traitor”

Screenshot: Ubisoft / Justin Clark / Kotaku

So, there’s a war going on, and you ain’t in it. Yasuke and Naoe have one target, and they’re gonna fight their way through a castle full of assholes to get him. Pick Yasuke first to do the fun job of killing everything on two legs. Things get messy and crowded quick, though, so whatever you need to do to end fights fast, do it; the only real note to make is that you’re gonna want to take out anybody holding a teppo first. There’s usually two or three of ‘em lurking around every corner, and they can make what should be a mundane murdertask into an absolute clusterfuck. There are also a lot of explosives in the area. Use them wisely.

Screenshot: Ubisoft / Justin Clark / Kotaku

When you’ve created a nice little meatstack out of the dead bodies in your wake, follow your mission marker, bash through the doors of the main pagoda and head upstairs. You’ll get a cutscene with Mitsuhide and his posse before he legs it. Let Yasuke deal with that, it’s Naoe’s time to chase down Mitsuhide on horseback. Feel free to follow him directly, but if you see an opportunity to cut across a wide open field to catch up, do it.

Screenshot: Ubisoft / Justin Clark / Kotaku

At the end of the road, Mitsuhide will finally decide to boss up and face our heroes head on. Yasuke will kick things off first, and you’ll need to be a little more patient with this than normal and punish his mistakes more than staying on constant offense. If you see him kick sand in Yasuke’s face, he’ll follow up with an unblockable. A simple dodge will get you out of that. Any combo you hit, back away after the final hit. Try to get spammy with attacks, he’ll retaliate with some pretty painful combos.

Once his armor’s off, Naoe will get the hot tag. Mitsuhide will fight a lot faster to accommodate, meaning everything from Yasuke’s phase, but less room for mistakes. Vault is going to be your savior here; keep him vulnerable, and often.

Screenshot: Ubisoft / Justin Clark / Kotaku

As soon as he’s done for, you’ll get a bit of conversation, and it’ll be up to you to decide how best to finish him. Naoe’s probably the best choice here. For a bunch of the previous targets, there’s room for a bit of nuance. But not this asshole. He deserves to lose his neck.

Naoe will get the Dragon’s Edge Katana for her trouble, which coincidentally goes real nice with her snazzy Assassin outfit. Now you’re prepared for the final challenge, the culmination of all lessons learned. The final member of the Shinbakufu is waiting for you at Kuramadera Temple in the Genbu Highlands in Yamashiro.

Screenshot: Ubisoft / Justin Clark / Kotaku

Your vengeance has come. To win, you’ll need all your power, all your cunning, all your skill and determinat—oh, wait, no, you go have a conversation and the dude just hands you the box and it’s over. Your reward is level-45 anti-climax. Enjoy.

.



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Assassin's Creed Shadow's latest update adds in collabs with Dead by Daylight and Balatro, of all things
Game Updates

Assassin’s Creed Shadow’s latest update adds in collabs with Dead by Daylight and Balatro, of all things

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A new Assassin’s Creed Shadows update is here, version 1.0.5, with this one mostly having a focus on parkour improvements. There are, however, a couple of collaborations that have arrived in the game too, one with Dead by Daylight, and another with Balatro. We’ll get to those in a second, for now let’s take a look at those parkour tweaks.


For starters, you can jump now! Well, you can do a vertical jump to be specific, letting both Naoe and Yusuke hop in an upwards direction to grab ledges or overhangs within reach. There’s also now a sprint toggle lock option, meaning as long as you’re moving, you won’t stop sprinting if you use the parkour up or down options.

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Some enhanced back and side ejects have been added in too, specifically the distance and height of them, Ubisoft noting that foot landings will be favoured over hand landings. Naoe specifically will have some new animations when she does a height-gaining side eject.


You’ll find a good few new photo mode features alongside all of this, with things like the ability to change the time of day, playing music while you’re tweaking your shots, the ability to save custom filters, and for PC specifically, a fullscreen option.


Now, about those collabs. The first is a Dead by Daylight event, which Ubisoft describes as follows: “As villagers begin to disappear, Naoe becomes suspicious of the strange presence attacking the local people of Harima. To succeed, you will need to master unique mechanics and confront a formidable otherworldly threat…” You can start this new quest from your hideout once you’ve unlocked Yasuke, and once you’ve beaten it you’ll get a trinket and banner.


Then there’s the Balatro collab. That damn card game really has it’s hooks in all of us, ‘ey? This one is just a new trinket for Naoe and amulet for Yasuke called Winning Hand. These both offer a legendary perk that “gives you a chance to trigger a random affliction effect on combo enders.” How do you get these new items? “You will need to work together to figure out how to get it!” says Ubisoft.


There’s a bunch of other general fixes with this update to the open world game too, but you can read about all of those over on the patch notes.



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Here's Why You Can't Kill Animals In Assassin's Creed Shadows
Game Reviews

Here’s Why You Can’t Kill Animals In Assassin’s Creed Shadows

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Assassin’s Creed Shadows is a very good game that animal lovers can enjoy because there’s no way to harm a single creature in the game (except for people, of course). That’s a first for the franchise and I wanted to learn why Ubisoft went this route for its latest open-world adventure.

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When I played and reviewed Assassin’s Creed Shadows in March, I was surprised to discover that the player can never attack or kill any animals in the game’s virtual recreation of feudal Japan. You can, however, pet them and draw pictures of the various wildlife you encounter. Unlike so many other open-world games, including previous Ubisoft projects, there aren’t even any aggressive predators in Shadows. You are never forced to kill any wolves or bears to survive and craft upgrades. I recently asked Ubisoft about this change, and learned from AC Shadows creative director Jonathan Dumont that there were a few reasons behind it.

Kotaku: In Shadows, players can’t hurt or hunt animals. The only way you can interact with them is by petting or painting them. What was the rationale/design decision behind this? 

Jonathan Dumont: There are several reasons behind this design choice. Firstly, feudal Japan didn’t have many large, aggressive animals to challenge players. When we reviewed the available animal roster, it seemed more appealing to observe and pet them rather than engage in combat.

Additionally, we wanted to incorporate world activities that offer a zen-like experience, providing spiritual or contemplative moments in nature to balance Naoe and Yasuke’s journey.

When did the idea of letting players add animals to the base happen? And did you expect people to start building petting zoos (like I did)?

JD: It happened really early on. In a team meeting, we saw the first implementation of the Sumi-e activity, where the initial design was to collect only the paintings, but as soon as we saw the animals it was unanimous that we needed to make them pets for the hideout. And yes, it immediately led to team members making cool-looking petting zoos and animal shelters.

Has the team appreciated the mostly positive online response to the lack of violence against animals in Shadows?

JD: I can’t speak for everyone, but I think players appreciated that it gave a different dimension to the exploration we were going for.

Does the team/Ubisoft feel like hunting animals could return in future installments, or is this a new direction for the series?

JD: I think it will depend on the setting and player fantasy. For AC Shadows, it made sense.

This interview has been lightly edited and formatted.



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