Should Ubisoft follow Take-Two's example? If Unity fails to meet sales expectations, Ubisoft could be forced to scale back on annual Assassin's Creed releases and possibly increase the number of side releases for handheld consoles and mobile devices. By comparison, Assassin's Creed had a production budget of $20 million, and Assassin's Creed II cost $24 million. Assassin's Creed Unity will likely cost even more - which means that it will need to make a huge splash for Ubisoft to justify such big production costs. Black Flag also cost an estimated $100 million and required a development team of 900 people. Yet despite strong reviews, Black Flag has flown at half mast with lackluster sales. Ubisoft continued the tradition with Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag.
In my opinion, Ubisoft thought that the naming scheme of Brotherhood and Revelations (direct sequels to Assassin's Creed II) resulted in lower sales, so it brought numbered releases back with Assassin's Creed III, which became the best-selling title of the entire series.
PS3, PS4, Xbox 360, Xbox One, Wii U, WIndows But the interesting thing about Assassin's Creed Unity is that it was developed concurrently with the releases of Revelations, Assassin's Creed III, and Black Flag - an incredible feat considering the manpower needed for those three titles. Ubisoft's web-like dependence on its own overseas studios is different from the way Activision Blizzard ( ATVI 0.02% ) splits its blockbuster Call of Duty franchise between two studios - Infinity Ward and Treyarch - which alternate between annual releases. Naval warfare and hunting became key gameplay components, but the game also stuck to its Assassin's Creed roots by refining its land-based gameplay. Assassin's Creed III, for example, introduced naval warfare, hunting, and other features, but none of the new features felt particularly polished or necessary.īlack Flag took those parts of Assassin's Creed III, evolved them, and tossed the player into a wide-open sandbox of the Caribbean ocean during the Golden Age of Piracy. Previous multi-studio efforts, such as Assassin's Creed: Revelations (7 studios) and Assassin's Creed III (6 studios) often contained disjointed gameplay elements that felt superfluous and incomplete. It was an incredible balancing act that all came together seamlessly in Black Flag. Whereas only one studio, Ubisoft Montreal, worked on Assassin's Creed (2007) and Assassin's Creed II, a whopping eight studios worked together on Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag.
Ubisoft spread the workload across more studios to launch annual holiday releases on time. The delicate balancing act of hitting annual releases In a previous article, I discussed the challenges that Ubisoft was facing with releasing annual chapters of Assassin's Creed ever since Assassin's Creed II (2009). Unity has been in development for three years - a longer period than any of the previous Assassin's Creed titles - and will arrive this fall.