Early details of several potential Assassin’s Creed projects have been leaked online, which are said to be in the “conceptual and prototype” phases within Ubisoft.
These include a project from Assassin’s Creed Rogue studio Ubisoft Sofia with story elements set in multiple time periods, including the highly-requested Aztec Empire, as well as India and the Mediterranean.
The other projects discussed by Insider Gaming sound like smaller spin-offs, such as a free-to-play four-player PVE co-op game from Ubisoft Chengdu, a multiplayer project which uses Ubisoft’s nebulous cloud computing tech from Ubisoft Annecy and Massive Entertainment, and a second Assassin’s Creed VR project.
Word of the projects comes as Ubisoft seeks to right itself following a period of poor financial results, and ongoing internal issues which led to a handful of disgruntled staff going on strike.
In the wake of games such as Just Dance 2023 and Mario + Rabbids: Sparks of Hope underperforming and a wave of project cancellations, it’s been suggested Ubisoft will look to its other evergreen brands for stability: Assassin’s Creed, Far Cry and Tom Clancy.
Today’s report makes it clear we probably won’t see any of these Assassin’s Creed projects for several years, even if all of them continue in development and become full releases.
“We do not comment on rumours and speculation,” a Ubisoft spokesperson told Eurogamer in response to the report this morning.
But details of these games hardly comes as a surprise. Indeed, these are the kinds of projects Assassin’s Creed boss Marc-Alexis Coté discussed with me in Paris last year, when Ubisoft laid out the future of its biggest franchise.
Coté even mentioned Ubisoft Sofia’s future work on the franchise to me at the time – something which now seems to gel well with today’s report about its potential next project.
“I want our other studios that have contributed wonderful ideas to the franchise – like, I keep using Ubisoft Sofia as an example,” Coté told me last year. “[Sofia] built Assassin’s Creed Rogue, something incredible with [Valhalla expansion] Dawn of of Ragnarok, and many other gems like their DLC for Origins Curse of the Pharaoh which was was brilliant as well.