Assassin’s Creed has become an annualized franchise, with a new entry having come every year since the release of Assassin’s Creed II in 2009. While not everyone is happy with this, Ubisoft Montreal CEO Yannis Mallat doesn’t think players are tiring of the franchise at all.
“The players will tell us. Right now there are more and more coming into the franchise, so I don’t see that day,” said Mallat to Eurogamer. “It’s our breakthrough. When you have quality content, the frequency of coming out with the game is not an issue at all. On the contrary, people expect more and more of that content. So it’s natural to be able to provide that content. The gamers are happy and it’s our job to make them happy.”
Indeed, sales for Assassin’s Creed III were the best in franchise history, having moved over 12 million copies. Maintaining this quality is accomplished by having several teams working on the franchise at once, much like how multiple studios now work on the Call of Duty franchise at Activision.
“When we say we are annualizing the franchise, we don’t say the teams only have one year to work on a project,” Mallat explained. “Assassin’s Creed is mature enough in terms of reaching the critical mass of players and community, but also in terms of envisioning enough content for years to come, and in terms of technology to sustain all that.”
“And more importantly, it’s mature enough in growing the talent and the core teams so we can have several core teams working on the next one and other projects on the brand,” he added. “That’s why every Assassin’s Creed has one dedicated core team working more than one year on their projects. We call that a roadmap. It takes into account the creative content – the settings, the where and what – the technology and the team.”
