Earlier this month, we got a confirmation for the rumors that there would no new Assassin’s Creed title in 2016, and that Watch Dogs 2 was in development. Now, Ubisoft chief executive Yves Guillemot has indicated in an Ubisoft “Investor Day” presentation that whenever Assassin’s Creed finally returns, it won’t be on a yearly schedule.
Starting with Assassin’s Creed 2 in 2009, we’ve seen a seven-year streak of hot-dog factory franchised games about a dude (and occasionally a lady) gettin’ their assassin on, which (depending on who you ask) gradually declined in quality and often shipped filled with bugs and glitches. Thankfully, one of the reasons Guillemont gave for the series scaling back to a “regular” basis was to makes sure developers “could really work on the property and all the mechanics to make sure we could take [the series] to another level.”
This quality over quantity sentiment was echoed by Ubisoft’s chief financial officer Alan Martinez, who stated their biggest priority was having time to “polish the game and come up with something really exceptional,” and that the series could possibly return to yearly installments if they have “enough innovation for the next one.” The presentation stated that this decision was partially based on user feedback, and that they wish to make sure Assassin’s Creed is able to deliver “unique and memorable gameplay experiences,” and not the kind where a character’s hair clips through their head.
All in all though, this is probably a strong decision for Ubisoft- if they can juggle multiple AAA IPs and rake in the dough off that, there’s no reason not to work on improving their biggest franchise. Maybe it’ll finally put those humbugs like me to rest, and at the very least, we hopefully won’t see anymore human-sized memes at E3 for a while.
