There aren’t many consistencies in the world of video games, but one thing we know for certain is we’re always going to have a new Assassin’s Creed game on the way. The long-running Ubisoft franchise has been an almost yearly release for a decade now and is easily their largest title. When games get as big as Assassin’s Creed has, there is a goal from companies to make them even bigger and more profitable. Lately, that solution has involved going the live services route.
Assassin’s Creed is reportedly planning to go the same way. In a report from Jason Schreier at Bloomberg, it was revealed that the next Assassin’s Creed release is going to be a live services game with an evolving world. While this is a game clearly still in the early stages, with years of development time ahead of it, there is a definite plan here to turn Assassin’s Creed into the next live service giant a la Grand Theft Auto Online, Fortnite, and the NBA 2K franchise.
Assassin’s Creed, a video game franchise set in huge worlds where each one can take hundreds of hours to complete, is getting even bigger. A new project, which is known inside Ubisoft Entertainment SA by the code name Assassin’s Creed Infinity, sets out to create a massive online platform that evolves over time, according to people familiar with its development.
The existence of the game was confirmed to Bloomberg and is going to be developed through a combined effort of Ubisoft Montreal and Ubisoft Quebec. Ubisoft themselves confirmed much of this information in a blog post to fans about the future of Assassins Creed.
Along with our announcement of new content coming for Assassin’s Creed Valhalla, we wanted to share some key updates on the talented and creative minds that will now be working in a collaborative, cross-studio structure between Ubisoft Montreal and Ubisoft Quebec that will guide, grow, evolve, and define the overall future of Assassin’s Creed that includes an important upcoming, early-in-development project codenamed Assassin’s Creed Infinity.
How the average fan of Assassin’s Creed feels about this likely varies. There are people who genuinely enjoy games as a service because it’s a series they can continue to play for years — worlds evolve, new content is added, and it’s a game that never really ends. For these people, they can enter the Assassin’s Creed universe and always expect new content to dive into.
However, there are others who hate the very existence of service-based games, because while all of the positives to it sound great, there’s usually a real-world cost to it. Microtransactions, yearly subscription fees, content hidden behind paywalls, and loot boxes are the bane of many players’ gaming experience and service-based games are usually full of them. If Assassin’s Creed goes this route, then to these players, it’s just another game meant to take money out of them for just wanting to play.