The Division is the best-selling game of 2016 so far, but Ubisoft still needs to do better

If you were to take a wild guess as to what the top selling video game of 2016 was, what would you come up with? Uncharted 4 ? Doom ? Tomb Raider? Nope. That game is Tom Clancy’s The Division . Ubisoft is justifiably happy with the news and adding to their joy is the fact that Far Cry Primal and Rainbow Six: Siege have made it to the top 10 list. Tom Clancy’s The Division, as with most Ubisoft games these days, got off to a financially successful but rocky start. Anticipation was huge for the game, and in terms of first-day sales, this game broke all of Ubisoft’s previous records , earning the company upwards of $300 million in the first week alone.

Initial numbers did spike, but players dropped off rapidly when the game failed to deliver long-term value and content. Reports of rampant cheating, server issues and the like further ruined the game’s reputation; but not for long. Subsequent updates brought in a tonne of new content, randomly-generated dungeons and much more. For a studio’s first attempt at an MMO, The Division is quite remarkable, but it’s not remarkable enough. The most recent reports indicate that the player count has dropped 93 percent since the game’s launch. For an MMO, that’s very bad news. Ubisoft’s market share this year stands at 16 percent in the US, 14.9 percent in Europe and Australia and 13 percent in Canada. Far Cry Primal is in the top 10 list, but it’s a mere blip on the radar and wasn’t as well received as was hoped. Rainbow Six: Siege also suffers a similar fate, but continuous updates have bolstered the player count, says Ubisoft. Most notably, the number of active players have gone up by 40 percent since the Skull Rain update, claims Ubisoft. Looking ahead, it does seem like Ubisoft is going to have a great year. Watch Dogs 2 is coming in November — hopefully, not as terrible on PC as the first game and Ghost Recon: Wildlands and South Park: The Fractured But Whole are expected early next year. The critical holiday season is yet to arrive, however, and by then we’re sure to see radical changes in that top 10 list. The likes of Battlefield 1 , Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare , Gears of War 4 and Dishonored 2 are yet to release. Battlefield 1’s beta has already topped charts as the most-played beta of all time. Oh, and did you know that there is a The Division-based movie in the works starring Jake Gyllenhaal and Jessica Chastain?