"Assassin's Creed 4: Black Flag" sales are down compared to its predecessor "Assassin's Creed 3".

According to IGN, Ubisoft has sold 10 million copies of AC4 in the company's third quarter in 2013, but AC3 previously sold 12 million in the same time frame.  AC4 was also available across multiple platforms, including the PlayStation 3, PlayStation 4, Xbox 360 and Xbox Live.

"During a conference call this afternoon, Ubisoft CEO Yves Guillemot did note that sales of Black Flag during the first six weeks of this year are outpacing those of AC3 during the same span last year, suggesting the latest game may have a longer tail as more people get their hands on next-gen consoles," IGN reports.

The company's sales report comes just after Ubisoft announced "Assassin's Creed: Freedom Cry" will no require the base game in order to play the DLC.

"We decided to release Assassin's Creed Freedom Cry as a standalone game for both fans and newcomers to the Assassin's Creed universe," Tony Key, Ubisoft senior vice president of sales and marketing, said in a statement. "Assassin's Creed Freedom Cry delivers key elements of an Assassin's Creed game, including a new hero, new environments and new weapons."

The standalone "Assassin's Creed: Freedom Cry" will be available for download starting Feb. 18 on the PS3 and PS4 for $14.99.

However, the question remains if AC4's lower sales will affect the upcoming "Assassin's Creed 5" title.  AC4's lead writer Darby McDevitt recently told Edge there is no set ending for the series.

"We stayed on course maybe 75 or 80 per cent of the time," McDevitt told Edge. "The end of the Desmond trilogy changed slightly but it was always intended to end that way. And then about two years ago we planned for another story - there's been a bit of confusion in that [Black Flag game director Ashraf Ismail] once said that Assassin's Creed has an ending - that's not exactly true."

"This storyline has an ending, but because all of history is open to us we see the universe as a Doctor Who type thing," McDevitt added. "There are so many possibilities we don't want to definitively end the universe, but we can have storylines that have endings."

Do you think lower sales will hurt the possibility of the "Assassin's Creed" series from continuing on?  Let us know in the comments section below.