Jason Schreier has, once again, published a scoop dedicated to one of the most famous videogame sagas in the world. Let’s talk about the next chapter of Assassin’s Creed. No, not that Infinity already announced, but a new game. The information was also corroborated by Eurogamer.net, which therefore removes even the smallest doubt on the matter.
According to the report, Ubisoft has decided to transform what it was originally intended to be an expansion of Assassin’s Creed Valhalla in an independent game. This chapter will allow the company to publish a new premium title awaiting Infinity, which should carry the saga towards a more live service future, with a single game that will be the container for multiple products and experiences dedicated to Assassin’s Creed.
The benefit to place an indie game on the market, rather than a new expansion of the hugely popular Valhalla, is twofold. First of all, a new game attracts more attention and is easily accessible even to those who have not purchased Valhalla. Secondly, Ubisoft can more easily justify a high price, even if the € 39.99 of Dawn of Ragnarok shows that the French company does not have too many difficulties in this regard.
Publishing a full game also serves for reassure investors and demonstrate that Ubisoft’s production chain is able to regularly release new products and generate consequent revenue.
At the same time, however, it could be symptom of a company that is struggling to manage the production of the most massive games. Assassin’s Creed is healthy and sagas like Far Cry keep releasing chapters one after the other, sure.
At the same time though, Ubisoft is in big trouble with Beyond Good & Evil 2 which, Jason Schreier tells us, is still in pre-production after five years of work. The project immediately generated an extremely positive reaction from the most experienced players and put Ubisoft in a good light, but it is clear that the move by the French company was announced when there were no plans or certainties regarding this project. , or that over the years the team’s creative vision has proved fallacious and the title has needed to be revisited in a massive way.
But let’s go further: Skull & Bones, the pirate game, has been postponed again and again. Also in this case there has often been talk of changes at the top, internal reboots, changes in the game structure and many development problems.
Let’s move on to Prince of Persia The Sands of Time Remake, postponed indefinitely and, now, perhaps canceled. According to rumors captured by Schreier, a remake of a chapter in the saga has been canceled. There is no certainty that it is precisely The Sands of Time, but it is natural to immediately think of this chapter, which since the announcement has suffered enormous criticism for the graphic component, the result of a much more limited project than the fans they expected.
Even the saga of Ghost Recon is in trouble, with Breakpoint not having at all registered a positive response equal to the previous chapter and, in recent times, it seems to have sunk by itself having become the center of Ubisoft Quartz’s NFT experiment.
How not to mention then Hyper Scapeofficially failed attempt to position itself in the battle royale market, which have done so much good to the finances of Epic Games (Fortnite), Electronic Arts (Apex Legends) and Activision (Warzone).
Obviously Ubisoft is still able to publish quality and successful games, but a Riders Republic and a new free-to-play spin-off by Tom Clancy aren’t enough to tell the world that Ubisoft is the biggest video game company in existence (which is the goal of every big company, of course).
The next two years will probably be important to understand how well Ubisoft is still able to do: let’s hope that the internal problems are resolved, especially those of personnel management. In fact, Schreier confirms that the scandals and internal clashes between employees and management (and consequent farewells of many employees) have created major problems for the lineup.
We hope that this new chapter of Assassin’s Creed is a beacon in the middle of the sea and that it shows that Ubisoft’s development teams still have a lot to say.
Parliamone is a daily opinion column that offers a starting point for discussion around the news of the day, a small editorial written by a member of the editorial team but which is not necessarily representative of the Multiplayer.it editorial line.
