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Huh. Assassin’s Creed Shadows is actually launching day one on Mac

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Yasuke with his sword up and and Naoe with a shuriken in her hand in Assassin's Creed Shadows
Ubisoft

Ubisoft’s biggest upcoming game is arguably Assassin’s Creed Shadows, which is set to release on November 15 across all the usual platforms, including PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X/S. That also seems to include some unusual ones, too, including Mac.

While the official store page only mentions that the game will be available digitally on PC, a press release sent to Digital Trends features a few more details, including that the standard edition will release on Macs with Apple silicon on day one via the Mac App Store. However, players won’t be able to buy more premium editions for the platform.

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This move is in line with both Ubisoft’s and Apple’s gaming strategies over the past few years. The former hasn’t shied away from releasing its games on newer, less-established platforms. It was one of the first publishers to release games on the now-shuttered Google Stadia, along with other cloud streaming services like Amazon Luna. Assassin’s Creed Odyssey was even the first demo for Stadia, back when it was known as Project Stream. The Ubisoft+ subscription service was also available on Stadia and Luna.

Baldur's Gate 3 being played on the M3 MacBook Air.
Luke Larsen / Digital Trends

As for Apple, the company has been attempting to make strides in the video game space for years. In 2022, it revealed two new features: MetalFX Upscaling and the Fast Resource Loading API. It also announced that Resident Evil Village, No Man’s Sky, and Grid Legends would be coming to Mac and would show off how supporting these features would improve performance. The next year, Apple brought noted game director Hideo Kojima out during WWDC 2023 to announce the Game Porting Toolkit, which makes it easier for developers to port their games to Mac.

The most recent silicon chip, the M3, does make gaming on Macs much better than it has been in the past. Digital Trends’ Luke Larsen was impressed with the M3 MacBook Air’s gaming performance, and was even able to run Baldur’s Gate 3 (with some caveats).

All of this is to say that while Mac might not be the best way to run Assassin’s Creed Shadows, it is possible, and Ubisoft is betting on that with a day one release for MacOS.

Carli Velocci
Carli Velocci
Former Contributor, Games
Carli is a technology, culture, and games editor and journalist. They were the Gaming Lead and Copy Chief at Windows Central…
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