Assassin’s Creed is set to fully go the live service game route in the future according to a fresh report.
Bloomberg asserts that Ubisoft is working on Assassin’s Creed Infinity, a new project which has just been confirmed by the publisher. As the name suggests, Infinity sets the stage for a ‘massive online platform’ that can be added to and evolved as time goes on, according to inside sources who are developing this creation.
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Assassin’s Creed Infinity is still apparently ‘years away’ from fruition, but it’ll involve multiple settings within its environment, effectively being a bunch of games which are all connected in this sprawling hub rather than being separate titles. Naturally, there’ll be room to build multiple expansions as time passes in typical live service fashion.
Of course, this isn’t really a shock, as the Assassin’s Creed franchise has already gone down the games-as-a-service route to some extent with more recent outings. If we look at the latest instalment, Assassin’s Creed Valhalla, it has a season pass and has already dripped out a wedge of content and a major DLC expansion (another expansion is imminent and should arrive this month or next – with more to come in 2022).
However, Assassin’s Creed Infinity is more ambitious than this, with a more overarching scope to tie gamers in, happening on a much larger scale as a home for multiple games, not just expansions.
Predictably, there’s been some unhappy reaction from gamers out there to this news, who fear that rather than having a neat hub to connect different games (locations and time periods), this will instead lead down a road of increasing leverage on players to fork out for more and more content.
At this stage, though, it’s jumping the gun to get too pessimistic, and it’s really not clear at all how this new live service scheme of things will work. Indeed, the Bloomberg report makes the point that Infinity could change from how even Ubisoft sees it right now, and it’s very much a project in ‘flux’. Feedback and reaction, then, will theoretically be useful in shaping how Infinity ends up.
Infinity and beyond
A spokeswoman from Ubisoft who talked to Bloomberg acknowledged the existence of Assassin’s Creed Infinity, but wouldn’t be drawn to give any details beyond that (unsurprisingly at this stage). All that the spokeswoman would officially say is that Ubisoft is planning to “exceed the expectations of fans who have been asking for a more cohesive approach” to the franchise.
Furthermore, Ubisoft just officially confirmed the project with a short announcement as we mentioned at the outset, in which Infinity was called an “early-in-development project”, with Ubisoft stating that: “Rather than continuing to pass the baton from game to game, we profoundly believe this is an opportunity for one of Ubisoft’s most beloved franchises to evolve in a more integrated and collaborative manner that’s less centered on studios and more focused on talent and leadership, no matter where they are within Ubisoft.”
When it comes to development, Infinity will see Ubisoft’s Montreal and Quebec teams, which have now been unified, jointly work on the project, each with a separate creative director – but with the Quebec studio ultimately in charge of the franchise (with this cross-studio collaboration headed by executive producer Marc-Alexis Côté).
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