Ubisoft Sees New First

Say what you will about Watch Dogs — if you've even been able to sample the game's full features, due to Ubisoft's Uplay service giving up the ghost on launch day and, even now, struggling to hold full connectivity at times for players looking to partake in the hacking-themed game's unique multiplayer challenges.

All those people flooding Ubisoft's servers at least did some bit of good. In this case, they propelled Watch Dogs to the tippy-top of Ubisoft's sales charts. As in, the game has sold more copies than any other Ubisoft title, ever — and it only took one day of sales (and quite a few preorders) for Watch Dogs to take top billing.

'I once said that the buzz around Watch Dogs was driven by the incredible passion of our early fans,' said Ubisoft Creative Director Jonathan Morin, in a statement. 'Today we broke the record for the biggest first day sales in Ubisoft history. I can never say it enough: thank you everyone! We love you all for your passion and your creativity.'

Unfortunately, Ubisoft didn't release actual sales figures for said game, so we don't know what, exactly, Watch Dogs was able to crank out to get first place for sales at the game developer and publisher. According to Game Informer, Assassin's Creed III held the previous record — and we know it hit around 12.5 million copies over five months, but that still doesn't provide much of a clue for the game's first-day sales figures.

We do, however, know Ubisoft's expectations. In a mid-May earnings call, Ubisoft CEO Yves Guillemot indicated that the company was looking for a sales target of around 6.3 million copies for Watch Dogs. We're not quite sure how far along the path Watch Dogs is to that goal, but setting a first-day sales record certainly makes one optimistic (were one an Ubisoft executive, at least).

'Watch Dogs is an amazing achievement and our teams should be proud that the creativity, innovation and long hours they invested in making this game are paying off. It's great to see so many customers enjoy playing the game, and it shows that Watch Dogs has cracked the code for developing a new blockbuster IP and a thoroughly new-gen experience,' said Guillemot, in a statement.