Ubisoft’s The Crew may have fizzled out after release but it found some significant new life through the Games With Gold program on Xbox Live. It was available for free on Xbox One and Ubisoft CFO Alain Corre revealed during a recent earnings call that the online racer was downloaded three million times.
Corre noted that the Games With Gold release had provided a “huge boost” in recurrent spending with a 15-fold increase from June 16th to July 15th when it was free. How significant were these figures? The total amount was more than a third of the revenue generated by the game on Xbox One during its lifetime. Corre noted that it was, “A great achievement for a title released 19 months ago.”
Which is funny considering how badly The Crew was received and how it went about addressing its issues since release. Even though a new expansion was released with Wild Run, offering improved visuals and lots of new content, the game wasn’t relevant before coming to Games With Gold. Maybe it’s a sign of things to come for the franchise? We’ll find out in the future.