Ubisoft already has four Assassin's Creed games in active development, including the upcoming Assassins Creed Mirage, Codename Red, Codename Hexe, and Codename Jade, and we recently found out that there are four more currently in the prototyping stage. Now we're finding out that Ubisoft is seemingly all-in on Assassin's Creed with plans to add hundreds more staff to Assassin's Creed projects.

The news comes courtesy of Axios Gaming's Stephen Totillo who sat in on Ubisoft's most recent earnings call. He noted that Ubisoft already has "about 2,000 people working on Assassin's Creed games," but plans to increase that number by 40 percent to "fuel its ambitious expansion."

In the face of economic headwinds, including an operating loss of 500 million Euros over its last financial year, Ubisoft doesn't plan to do a lot of hiring. Instead, CEO Yves Guillemot said that it plans to reallocate developers from other projects. This is definitely bad news for Beyond Good and Evil fans hoping that the sequel will ever see the light of day.

NEWS: Ubisoft says it will increase the number of developers on the Assassin's Creed franchise by 40% "to fuel its ambitious expansion"

But company headcount is down from 20,700 in September to below 20,000 thanks to office closures, layoffs and "tight controls on recruitments"

— Stephen Totilo (@stephentotilo) May 16, 2023

Ubisoft is already down over 700 developers due to office closures, layoffs, and "tight controls on recruitment." There's also been past reports of veteran devs leaving Ubisoft in droves over ongoing allegations of operating a toxic work environment.

But even with its remaining developers being tasked with Assassin's Creed titles, Ubisoft plans to launch a slew of games by the end of March 2024, including Assassin's Creed Mirage, Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora, Rainbow 6 Mobile, The Division: Resurgence, Skull & Bones, The Crew: Motorfeest, and XDefiant as well as "another large game."

Ubisoft had hardly any games come out in 2022 and 2023 has been pretty light so far as well. This is largely the reason why Ubisoft posted a half-billion Euro loss and is having some difficult discussions with its investors. However, things are looking up for the French publisher with news on Assassin's Creed Mirage and Skull & Bones expected at Ubisoft Forward next month.

Skull & Bones has been in development for nearly a decade, and even last year's gameplay reveal didn't exactly entice fans of living the virtual pirate life. That might be why Skull & Bones got delayed back in January alongside several high-profile game cancellations. We'll see what Ubisoft has in store for us when the game is re-revealed in June.

Assassin's Creed Mirage, meanwhile, is said to be a "more intimate" and "character-driven story" than previous Assassin's Creed titles, with a more linear level design that harkens back to the franchise's origins. Assassin's Creed Mirage is expected to arrive later this year.



Posted: May 19, 2023 12:35 pm
Related Forum: Gaming Discussion

Source: https://www.thegamer.com/ubisoft-2000-devs-assassins-creed-wants-more/