The next big game from Ubisoft is being delayed once more.
Assassin's Creed Shadows is delayed to March 20, 2025, Ubisoft shared in a press release on Thursday. Originally slated to launch back in November 2024, the game was initially delayed to February 2025 in order to allow for additional polish.
Ubisoft CEO Yves Guillemot says that the second delay was decided in order to give the teams as much time as possible to craft the "most ambitious opus of the Assassin's Creed franchise," adding that they "made the decision to provide an extra month of development to Shadows in order to better incorporate the player feedback gathered over the past three months that will enable us to fully deliver on the potential of the game and finish the year on a strong note."
With its release date bumped to March, Assassin's Creed Shadows faces less stiff competition immediately around launch. Multiple major games are currently slated to arrive in February, including Xbox and Obsidian's Avowed and Capcom's Monster Hunter Wilds.
Assassin's Creed Shadows also faces more direct competition in the form of Ghost of Yōtei, PlayStation and Sucker Punch Productions' sequel to Ghost of Tsushima. Ghost of Yōtei is penciled in for a 2025 launch at the moment, though the exact release date is not known.
The Assassin's Creed franchise has long remained one of Ubisoft's main pillars, with the last mainline entry, 2020's Viking role-playing tale Assassin's Creed Valhalla, being of Ubisoft's best-performing games of all time. Ubisoft is confirmed to be working on remakes of some older Assassin's Creed titles as part of its longterm strategy, including a reported remake of 2013's hit Assassin's Creed 4: Black Flag, which allowed players to sail the seas as a pirate.
Ubisoft continues to face financial struggles
This second delay comes as Ubisoft is struggling, with the company blaming the underperformance of titles like Star Wars Outlaws. Just before the end of the year, Ubisoft announced it was discontinuing support for free-to-play shooter XDefiant in June 2025, with its San Francisco, Sydney, and Osaka studios being shut down after around 277 employees who worked on the game were laid off.
Ubisoft leadership is now exploring options around selling the company, with Guillemot noting that the company has appointed advisors to assist with "exploring various strategic and capitalistic options to unlock the full value potential of our assets."
Prior reports indicated that Ubisoft could see a buyout from its founding Guillemot family in conjunction with Chinese megaconglomerate Tencent. A potential deal might even see the company taken private. Ubisoft currently holds the cloud gaming rights to Activision Blizzard King titles, a deal that was reached with Microsoft in order to allow the latter to acquire Activision Blizzard King back in October 2023.
Assassin's Creed Shadows is currently slated to launch on March. 20, 2025 across Xbox Series X|S, Windows PC (including Steam and the Epic Games Store), PlayStation 5, Mac, and Amazon Luna.
