Assassin’s Creed might seem like an unstoppable force year in and year out, but Ubisoft wouldn’t hesitate to delay the blockbuster if it just wasn’t up to the studio’s quality standards. Ubisoft North American president Laurent Deto recently spoke to IGN about game delays, claiming that he’d never consider pushing something out the door if it wasn’t done.
“If we think we’ve ended up with a 70 percent Assassin’s Creed game, we’re not going to ship it,” Detoc said. “That damages the brand. I’m not going to give you the names of products, because you know them as well as I do, but if you start to make games at 70 percent, even with a big brand, eventually people are going to change their mind about that brand.
“They won’t want it anymore. That’s what saves the recurrence. There are 30 million people or so who have been playing Grand Theft Auto. Last year, to pick a round number, we had about 10 million people playing Assassin’s Creed. When we come up with an Assassin’s Creed the next year, there’s another 10 million brand new people who might be interested in the new setting, because of the new history, or the new naval battles and the pirates. It’s a variation on gameplay from even last year.”
Ubisoft delayed Watch Dogs into 2014, so it’s obvious that the French studio isn’t afraid to take its time with the bigger properties.