Launch sales of Assassin's Creed Syndicate were affected by the bug-ridden and poorly received Assassin's Creed Unity, according to Ubisoft exec Alain Martinez. Speaking during an investor call last night, Martinez explained that the series had seen a noticeable dip in week one sales compared to last year.

"Clearly in our first week we were impacted by what happened with Assassin's Creed Unity," he said.

Following the release of Unity, a string of bugs and user complaints ranging from irritating glitches through to game-breaking bugs like characters falling through the ground, or co-op sessions crashing the game, were loudly voiced on the Internet. Most famously, the PC version suffered from some hilariously horrifying character model bugs, pictures of which quickly spread over the Internet.

Despite the decreased week one sales, Ubisoft chief Yves Guillemot noted that Syndicate may yet beat Unity in overall sales. "We seem to experience the same sales curve as [Assassin's Creed 4: Black Flag]," he said. "Versus Unity, Syndicate was down in the first week but nicely outperformed it in its second week as it benefited from positive word of mouth."

Unfortunately, Guillemot didn't reveal whether the combined two-week sales of Syndicate were still lower than those of Unity over the same period. Given the more positive reception Syndicate received, it's likely sales will pick up over the holidays.

Hopefully sales of Syndicate don't pick up too much, though. The yearly push to churn out a new Assassin's Creed game has begun to take its toll on the franchise, which has grown stale since the release of Black Flag. While there's no doubt that Syndicate was already in production prior to the release of Unity, there's a hope that latter's poor reception may have given Ubisoft the push it needs to give the franchise a break.