Assassin’s Creed 22: Electric Boogaloo
Ubisoft has lofty goals as a publisher and developer and you can see why looking at its financials. The Assassin’s Creed series is the fourth best selling series of the last nine years, which makes sense when your series sees releases as frequently as Call of Duty and sports games. Grand Theft Auto, incidentally, still places fifth, but it’s a bit of an aberration on the list.
Point is, Ubisoft is looking at Assassin’s Creed (also Just Dance) and noting that “quality and regular releases” lead to good numbers and that franchises lead to long term visibility and that the new console cycle is a good “opportunity for new brands.” Games as service, games as brands.
Ubisoft says the The Crew is designed “to be the World of Warcraft of driving games,” that it wants Far Cry 4 to be in the year’s top 10 sellers, that Watch Dogs is primed to be the biggest new IP launch ever. Though the latter cites record pre-order sales, but does that include PS4 bundle pre-orders? I guess the short of it is: expect The Crew 2, The Division 2, Watch Dogs 2. They’re the new Assassin’s Creed. Of course, you already should have expected this.
There’s also mention there of this year’s French revolution-tinged Assassin’s Creed Unity with the “Let them eat cake” line attributed to Marie Antoinette even though there’s no evidence that she ever said it.
Anyway, Beyond Good and Evil 2, please.
Ubisoft FY2014 Earnings presentation [Ubisoft]
