Assassin's Creed II pre-orders up 80% on original

Pre-order numbers for the forthcoming Ubisoft priority release, Assassin's Creed II, are up 80 per cent on numbers for the original game, according to the publisher's CEO Yves Guillemot.

That is set against an expectation that the company will sell around 15-25 per cent higher total sales of the sequel, although he refused to be drawn on specifics speaking in a conference call to investors.

By contrast pre-orders of Avatar remain relatively low, although not wholly dissimilar to those for the publisher's prior movie tie-in King Kong.

Guillemot also revealed that a deal was signed at the beginning of 2009 with Sony on marketing of Assassin's Creed II, which will see TV adverts relating only to the PlayStation edition of the game - an agreement that will see more activity "than would have been possible otherwise," he added.