XDefiant Hit 1 Million Players Within Hours of Launch

XDefiant is finally here, and despite some teething issues, it’s performing quite well. It was recently revealed that XDefiant managed to secure one million unique players within 2.5 hours of launch, making it Ubisoft’s fastest-ever game to reach that milestone. At one point, the game had around 500,000 concurrent players. Now, around two days after the game hit the open market, it has approximately three million players spread across all platforms – PS5, XSX, and PC.

It’s performing in line with some of the most popular first-person shooter titles to release in recent years. It was a long and rocky road to get here, but it seems as though the wait has paid off and XDefiant is a success. Ubisoft was quick to address the early issues on the platform that were preventing players from matchmaking, and what remains after that action is a very well-polished and entertaining shooter.

Be Defiant

For the longest time, people thought XDefiant would be like Ubisoft’s Skull & Bones. That pirate-themed, open-world title was pushed back multiple times over several years, and it looked for a while like XDefiant would follow the same path. It was originally due to be released last summer, but sizeable issues with the development cycle threw spanners in the works time and again. Regardless of those pushbacks, the game is finally here and players are loving it.

After all, XDefiant is a free-to-play shooter, which means it’s guaranteed to do well for at least a short time. The financial model for this game will be held up by microtransactions, but Ubisoft was eager to highlight that there are no pay-to-win elements in the game.

According to insider reports, XDefiant is hitting expectations and milestones set internally at Ubisoft. That’s a huge relief for the firm, as there were some expectations that it’d flop at launch based on the impressions garnered from the community over the last few months. However, with there being something of a lull in the competitive FPS space right now, XDefiant has managed to plug a big hole.

Black Ops 6 is a few months away yet, Modern Warfare 3 is winding down, and The Finals wasn’t as good as it was expected to be. It could be said that XDefiant has launched at the perfect time.

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