The Assassin’s Creed Series Isn’t Going Away
According to an interview Ubisoft held with Gamasutra, the developer made it known that they don’t plan on letting the Assassin’s Creed series die out anytime soon. North America executive Laurent Detoc says he hopes that the company will make up to a tenth installment and beyond in the series. He said in the interview, “I also hope we will be able to branch out from within the series. It’s very simple to me. There’s no such thing as not being able to annualize a franchise. If it’s good, people will come.”
By annualizing the franchise, the developer is able to push out a new game in a series each year. The Call of Duty franchise capitalizes on this, though there are pros and cons to this sort of structure. While you get a new title out each year which helps earn revenue, the series has a tendency to lose some of its shine and interest. The games could become too lackluster and turn some players away.
Speaking of the CoD franchise, Ubisoft looks like they are taking lessons from that series’ publisher. The developer now has different teams working on each Assassin’s Creed title, those part of the core storyline and its spinoffs. Assassin’s Creed 3 director Alex Hitchison said that Ubisoft’s decision to annualize the series single-handedly funded his entire game. About the decision he said:
“We have multiple groups now working [on the series]. We started this one in January 2010, the same time as Brotherhood and before Revelations.
The core team on this one has been working at it for almost three years, which is something you can almost never get in the industry these days – it’s too expensive, too risky. So we need the other projects to support that kind of development – these big jumps.”
He goes on to mention that it’s not how often you release titles, but how good they are when they release. It looks like he’s putting emphasis on the fact that no matter if Ubisoft releases an Assassin’s Creed title each year, the games will be good enough to keep players coming back. With the amounts of spinoff titles and this new announcement about the Assassin’s Creed series, it’s easy to see just how Ubisoft is making this annual title release a reality.
