You wouldn’t believe that Ubisoft is capable of postponing an annual franchise like Assassin’s Creed – which is rumoured to have not one but two games out by next year. However, in an interview with IGN, Ubisoft North American president Laurent Detoc indicated that if the quality fell short, they would have no issues with doing the same.
“If we think we’ve ended up with a 70 percent Assassin’s Creed game, we’re not going to ship it. That damages the brand.” This is indicative of the Watch Dogs delay, which Ubisoft claimed was to further polish the game.
You could ask where was this behaviour when the company shipped Assassin’s Creed III – a sequel lambasted for its story, gameplay, pacing and mountains of bugs. Interestingly, even if he doesn’t say it, Detoc knows how we feel.
“I’m not going to give you the names of products, because you know them as well as I do, but if you start to make games at 70 percent, even with a big brand, eventually people are going to change their mind about that brand. They won’t want it any more. That’s what saves the recurrence.
“There are 30 million people or so who have been playing Grand Theft Auto. Last year, to pick a round number, we had about 10 million people playing Assassin’s Creed. When we come up with an Assassin’s Creed the next year, there’s another 10 million brand new people who might be interested in the new setting, because of the new history, or the new naval battles and the pirates. It’s a variation on gameplay from even last year.”
Detoc added, “You bring something fresh, but you have to bring quality too. There’s a lot of people who can play your game. We have fans who come back to the franchise and we’re very thankful for them, because we think we’re giving them a good game to play, and they give back to us when they buy it. But there’s a lot more people out there who we can sell games to.”
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