In a post to the company blog, Ubisoft announced that the Assassin’s Creed franchise is taking a break, and won’t release a major entry this year. According to the post, the team is “stepping back and re-examining the Assassin’s Creed franchise. As a result, we’ve decided that there will not be a new Assassin’s Creed game in 2016.”
The post continues on to explain how Ubisoft has reimagined their approach to the franchise: “We’ve also updated our development processes and recommitted to making Assassin’s Creed a premier open-world franchise,” the company stated. “We’re taking this year to evolve the game mechanics and to make sure we’re delivering on the promise of Assassin’s Creed offering unique and memorable gameplay experiences that make history everyone’s playground.”
It should be noted that the Assassin’s Creed film starring Michael Fassbender is still launching this year on December 21. In the company’s earnings call today, Ubisoft’s president Yves Guillemot said that because the film franchise is a separate entity from the video game franchise, it made sense to release without any connection to a game. This way, the film’s brand can grow independently of the video games.
“We didn’t want to connect the movie to a game that would be about the same subject. The movie guys are actually extremely happy we don’t have a game.”
The movie, along with the release of Assassin’s Creed Chronicles: Russia this past week, should hopefully hold fans over until next year.
President Guillemot also explained the reasoning behind the video game franchise’s break. He said that Ubisoft wants future games in the series to finish development sooner in order to provide more time to polish them before release. This would also mean fewer post-launch patches and updates. This strategy may directly caused by Assassin’s Creed Unity’s bug-riddled launch in 2014.
It was also noted that this past year’s entry into the franchise, Assassin’s Creed Syndicate, was as successful as the company had hoped, with a “slower launch than expected,” cited in the report.
Last month, there were big rumors about Ubisoft’s best-selling franchise taking a break. There was also speculation that the next entry in the franchise would be set in ancient Egypt. These also included hints that Watch Dogs 2 would launch this fall in place of the movie.
Do you think this is the right move for Assassin’s Creed? Have you enjoyed recent entries in the series, or did you grow tired of the annual releases a while ago? Let us know in the comments.
