Future Assassin's Creed Games Could Be Making a Positive Change

Highlights

Assassin’s Creed Shadows producer Karl Onnée said four-year development cycles offer “the right balance” for iteration, which he finds crucial to making good games.
His comments suggest future Assassin’s Creed games could also have longer development cycles.
This would fit wider industry trends, as AAA game development cycles have generally been getting longer in recent years.

Future Assassin’s Creed games could have longer development cycles compared to the current series standard, a senior Ubisoft official has suggested. Many Assassin’s Creed fans would likely characterize this as a positive change, as a vocal portion of the fandom has long been calling for longer development cycles for the franchise.

The Assassin’s Creed series had annual releases from 2009 to 2015. Since then, Ubisoft has put out four more mainline games and is about to launch its fifth one in November 2024, thus averaging one new title every two years. The company’s individual development cycles have progressively gotten longer over this period, with that trend culminating in Assassin’s Creed Shadows, which is already the series’ longest-running project that’s been in the works for approximately four years.

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Assassin’s Creed Shadows Producer Says 4-Year Dev Cycles Offer ‘the Right Balance’

Reflecting on this state of affairs in a recent interview with GamesIndustry.biz, Assassin’s Creed Shadows lead producer Karl Onnée suggested that four years might be the new norm for the series, at least as far as his own projects are concerned. “Four years, I think, is the right balance to go from conception to production and get the feedback necessary to adapt,” the industry veteran explained. Onnée also identified incessant iteration as the key to continuing to meet the series’ quality standards. That’s something that he feels cannot be hurried even at a company the size of Ubisoft, which is one of the largest independent game developers on the planet.

Past a Certain Point, Making Good Games Requires Time More Than People

Elaborating on that point, the official explained that throwing more people at a project might help it get completed more quickly, but still isn’t conducive to iteration. For that, there’s only one resource that matters, time. “The more time you have, the more you can iterate,” Onnée said. It is through this prism that the producer framed four-year development cycles as offering “the right balance” for developers.

Time is also what will tell whether other Ubisoft studios in charge of the Assassin’s Creed franchise share Onnée’s perspective. But seeing how AAA game development cycles have been getting longer across the board in recent times, the notion of all future Assassin’s Creed games adopting four-year cycles is consistent with industry trends.

The next mainline installment after Ubisoft Quebec’s AC Shadows is expected to be Assassin’s Creed Codename Hexe, which is presently in the works at Ubisoft Montreal. When exactly Hexe started development is unclear, but the project’s existence was officially confirmed in September 2022 alongside Shadows, which was known as Assassin’s Creed Codename Red at the time.

Assassin’s Creed Shadows

Previously known as Codename Red, Assassin’s Creed Shadows is an upcoming game in Ubisoft’s open-world franchise. Set in Feudal Japan, Shadows includes two playable characters, a ninja assassin specializing in stealth and a samurai who focuses on power.

Open-World

Action-Adventure

RPG

Systems