Assassin's Creed is officially a one-per-year title along with the likes of Fifa and WWE. It's a fantastic business model for Ubisoft which has firmly cemented the game as their most successful franchise of all time. What's the key to its success? It's obvious (in Ubisoft's own words) “What is impressive with the release year after year of Assassin’s Creed is our ability to deliver every time with a high level of innovation and creativity in a large and very diverse open world. There is no other open world console game that is coming on a yearly basis. This is achieved through great execution by providing more resources and by putting in place a very compelling network of leads and associate studios.”
You can't argue with that. Open world games are always impressive (if they're done well) and those not in the know would think they take years and years to develop. I don't know how they do it but nailing Assassin's Creed every 12 month is some achievement. The question is how long can they keep it up?
It seems like they're pretty confident about their annual game release plan, so confident in fact that they've announced plans to transfer the model to other games.
“We are applying the same product template to our other strong franchises to bring them back to Assassin’s Creed blockbuster profitable status,” they said.
Which games could that be?
Their biggest franchises include-
Prince of Persia,
Rainbow Six,
Ghost Recon,
Splinter Cell,
Far Cry,
Driver,
Call of Juarez,
Just Dance.
It's an impressive list of game series to choose from. Splinter Cell and Driver (perhaps even Ghost Recon) all seem a little outdated. Following the success of Vegas 2, a safe bet would be Rainbow Six. Prince of Persia would be a good move but is it a bit too similar to Assassin's Creed? Failing that, annual Far Cry would be awesome and Just Dance is a dead cert. It's the exact time of game that gets whacked out in regular cycles; people always want new songs and new moves.
We'll keep our eyes peeled on which titles get the AC treatment and let you know as soon as we do.