Assassin’s Creed has been an annual franchise ever since Assassin’s Creed II came out in 2009, with Brotherhood releasing in 2010, Revelations this year and another game in the franchise confirmed for next year. But contrary to popular belief, Ubisoft does not spend just one year on each of their Assassin’s Creed game, just because it is an annual franchise.
“One of the difficulties is dealing with the perceptions that [we] didn’t spend enough time developing the game,” said Ubisoft senior VP of sales and marketing Tony Key in an interview with [a]list.
“There’s this misperception about the brand that we keep making [Assassin’s Creed] once a year, and we only spend a year on it… we’ve got a studio in Montreal with 2,000 people working on stuff. Not all are on Assassin’s Creed but many are, and so are many studios around the world. Missions made in Bucharest and there’s the multiplayer from Singapore. The DNA is owned and operated by Ubisoft Montreal but it is crafted by a lot of people.
“We work on it a lot longer than one year and that’s part of it; we have multiple studios. Assassin’s Creed is a blueprint brand. What that means is it has a lot of resources focused onto it. We constantly have people thinking about it, so we have a lot of people working on future iterations, while these games are being made we’re already thinking about the next one.
“I hope people are getting over the idea that we rush them out; we don’t make Assassin’s Creed games in one year. That’s something we want people to understand, and hopefully the message can get out.”
The next Assassin’s Creed game, set for release in 2012, is supposed to be set in either Japan, China, Egypt, or some other locations listed in this survey.
In our review of Assassin’s Creed: Revelations, we gave it a solid 9.5/10 and called it the best game in the series. Reach our review here.