We have a troubling new rumor to report about Assassin’s Creed Infinity.
If you may remember, Ubisoft announced Assassin’s Creed Infinity as a platform of sorts for the franchise. Lore wise, it seems to have correlations to Abstergo, so you could feel like you are entering one of those machines yourselves. But given what we have seen of the Call of Duty Hub, it seems like Ubisoft is aiming for something like that. As Call of Duty is Activision’s breadwinner, Assassin’s Creed is Ubisoft’s breadwinner, so it makes sense that they would make a platform just for that game, just for the fans of said game.
Assassin’s Creed Infinity has rightly seen skepticism, as Ubisoft has not demonstrated a particular affinity for making clients, whether for their own PC platform, or to use for logins on consoles. The experience on these clients and apps is inconvenient and obnoxious, and the only reason they stick around is there are Ubisoft fans who like their games enough willing to deal with it.
Now, however, red flags are coming up on this platform. As shared on reddit by user Ajxtt, French speaking YouTuber and streamer j0nathan has tweeted out a rumor, that Assassin’s Creed Infinity will be a microtransaction heavy platform.
In fact, Assassin’s Creed Infinity will have a subscription, of all things, so that you can access the older Assassin’s Creed games. The subscription will also give customers an exclusive item or skin per month, and access to DLC.
It isn’t clear if the subscription will also give access to newer titles, in which case there may at least be some value to get out of it. j0nathan also says he isn’t sure if the rumor is true, but he decided to reveal it to raise the expected furor that would make Ubisoft cancel their plans.
And there’s definitely good reason to expect fans to be unhappy with this. Gamers are already facing a deluge of subscriptions. As consumers, these same gamers are also looking at other subscriptions they already have, such as for video and movie streaming, podcasts, news outlets, food kits, subscription boxes, and so on.
But there is a possibility, as unlikely as it seems to most gamers, that there will be Assassin’s Creed that could be on board with this. The devil is in the details: if the subscription isn’t too costly, and Ubisoft manages to pull off an efficient, convenient client, they might just get enough fans on board. Tying it to PlayStation Plus and Game Pass might also help them thread that needle on consoles.
Anyway, we don’t even know if the rumor is true, but if it is, it’ll certainly feel strange, in light of how easy it is to get the older Assassin’s Creed games in various forms. Maybe Ubisoft could offer things like upscaled versions of the old games, or cloud gaming. We’ll just have to wait and see.
