French game developer Ubisoft confirmed it won't release an Assassin's Creed game this year. Since 2009, this marks the first time that the game would not have an installment in a year. The developer said that they have to "re-examine" things to improve the game.
Time described the move as "a smart one," after the two disappointing entries in the game franchise.
The latest installment of the game, Assassin's Creed Syndicate, had poor performance in terms of sales last year. During the holiday quarter of 2015, the franchise's sales were down by 44 percent ---equivalent to 561.8 million euros ($636.7 million). In the same period of 2014, the sales were 809.7 million euros ($917.3 million).It missed the company's own estimate of 600 million euros ($679 million) for the fourth quarter of 2015, per reports from International Business Times.
According to CEO of Ubisoft Yves Guillemot, Assassin's Creed had lower sales last year because of gaming market's "exceptionally competitive environment." In order to improve it, the company decided to take a year to reinvent the game. The CEO added that they might give the next installment "a brand new dimension."
Furthermore, the depressing sales of 2015 Assassin's Creed Syndicate could be blamed to the bug-filled launch of Assassin's Creed Unity, which was launched in 2016. Gamers experienced numerous performance issues and bugs that led to the company releasing a public apology.
The known errors of Unity are missing faces of characters, random hair physics, crazy animations, videos showing floating characters and the game's main protagonist walking on air, GameSpot published.
Meanwhile, Forbes advised that the developers should take an entire extra year to build and polish the game. Also, the website gave prediction about the next Assassin's Creed. It said the location of the next installment could be located somewhere ancient Egypt.
In a separate article from Forbes, it claimed that the next installment of the game might be titled: Assassin's Creed: Empire. The rumors started on 4chan through someone who is claiming to be a Ubisoft developer. However, the website cautioned readers that this information should be taken with a massive grain of salt.
"Egypt. There won't be an AC in 2016. You may screencap this and refer to it when nothing is shown in E3 2016. You'll have to wait until 2017 for it. The reason: It will be a complete revamp of the series," alleged Ubisoft developer said in 4chan forum.
For now, gamers should expect to have an Assassin's Creed game that's really worth looking forward to once again. Stay tuned with Gospel Herald for more gaming news.
