With nearly 4 years of support, The Crew 2 hasn’t quite yet achieved the fame as Forza or Gran Turismo, but it surely generates profit, more than you think. Despite its physics flaws, repetitive events, and massive grinding, it’s a genre on its own and it’s a brilliant concept. With these great profits, we expect The Crew 3 sales and critics to be better than ever. Ubisoft presents 2021 as a very successful year and expects the forthcoming years to be promising, but still remain competitive within the industry.
Latest sales Figures
Based on recent figures, The Crew franchise continues to grow and becomes a relevant franchise for Ubisoft to retain. The series began back in 2013 with an amazing concept that most racing fans loved! Large open-world for cars to play around with. Unfortunately, it turned out a little awkward with its “insipid storytelling”, but the focus here is quantity over quality. Years later, the map was re-released with much smoother graphics and more content in the original game’s sequel, The Crew 2. Although some fans weren’t totally satisfied with the controversial decision to re-release the same map, it seemed to have become a great success:
“The Crew 2 warrants special mention for its continued strong velocity, with engagement and overall revenues up respectively 70% and 53% versus two years ago thanks to its unique positioning as a community-based driving game … resulting in more than 30 million unique players attracted by The Crew franchise since 2014.”
-Ubisoft Entertainment
So far, The Crew series has been enjoyed by 30 million unique players and counting! For a franchise that only has 2 titles, these stats are amazing, considering the number of times players have complained about the game’s flaws. Lack of details in physics, inaccurate sounds, reused objects are some of the factors that don’t put The Crew 2 at the top of the charts, but the freedom compensates a bit. The freedom and frequent updates have kept the game alive to this date.
Expansions and more staff
The latest major DLC for the game adds the Contractor, allowing you to become a taxi or limo driver and extract objects to a given destination within a certain time limit. The concept is simple, but the challenges remain entertaining. Such updates have attracted new players to the franchise, along with its discount periods and free-to-play days. Thanks to the enormous growth of the franchise, but also other games from Ubisoft, the company seems to expand.
“To sustain its ambitious growth plans, Ubisoft has increased its workforce by an additional 1,200 new talents over the past 12 months, a reflection of its capacity to attract the industry’s best.”
-GlobeNewswire
Although Ivory tower is a subsidiary of Ubisoft, the profit increase for the latter will affect the developers of The Crew indirectly, eventually expanding the studio. It once started with quite a large team of 100 developers. That increased by another 100 when the second title was out on the market. With what we hope to be a larger team for more resources than before, expectations for The Crew 3’s quality and sales power will be that much higher.
Past Figures and Response
Near the end of The Crew 1’s support, Ivory tower stated that the game had been played by 5 million unique players. Assuming that these numbers didn’t increase further that year and that we’re currently at 30 million players, that’s a 600% increase in sales since 2016 for the franchise. Hopefully, in the future, The Crew 3 sales figure can bump that up to a four-digit percentage increase. It’s hard to reach such great numbers. Although, this still indicates that the series starts to become a major competitor within the racing game industry and possibly a threat to its rivals.
Calling all units – The last expansion for The Crew 1
Comparing The Crew’s insane growth to some of the super-popular racing games such as Gran Turismo or Forza, it might actually be outperforming both of them, based on stats from VGChartz. On the other hand, Gran Turismo and Forza are more established and outperform The Crew in terms of the number of units sold within a shorter period of time. It’s a very competitive market, but when comparing growth between titles, The Crew is showing the best stats.
Rumours about The Crew 3
Now for the more interesting parts about The Crew 3… or should it be called The Crew Orlando? This leak occurred last year where players spotted some suspicious files in The Crew 2, named The Crew Orlando. Sure, Orlando is a beautiful city, but making a whole game set in Orlando only seems a bit odd. Especially for a franchise that is notorious for their huge maps!
Project ORLANDO by Ubisoft Ivory Tower has leaked on Reddit – https://t.co/NxxrM3L3a7
The game is not actually The Crew 2 DLC. It's currently just dubbed as "The Crew: Orlando" and is a completely new game with a new driving engine. Currently in pre-Alpha & no set release date.
— Tom Henderson (@_Tom_Henderson_) September 24, 2021
It’s easy to expect the name “Orlando” is simply a code name for the entire project. Thereby, it’s not revealing its actual name and location, but in fact, it seems to be a tropical location. Likewise, Forza named the McLaren Senna car file “MCL_Wellington_18“, probably for the same reason of not spoiling classified information. The freelance writer for IGN, Tom Henderson, confirms that this is a part of the next game and it’s supposed to have a reworked physics engine which is very promising to hear. Looking at the image below, it’s an actual image among the Orlando game files.
Project Orlando found in The Crew 2 game files
If the growth continues at the same rate, it’s safe to say that Ivory Tower has created one of the most successful racing game franchises. Based on sales figures compared to its rivals, The Crew is quite strong and competitive. Their success is fascinating considering they only have two titles available on the market. As long as no mistakes are made, The Crew will remain a threat to others and a successful concept.
