Ubisoft says it's seen a big response to its new strategy for Assassin's Creed, and the publisher plans to bring the same sort of template to other series starting with Rainbow Six and The Division.
"We revealed our most ambitious roadmap ever for the Assassin’s Creed brand which received an incredibly enthusiastic response from fans," CEO Yves Guillemot says. "Our objective is to bring the brand to new heights by reaching a significantly wider audience with more platforms and business models. We are replicating this strategic template with our other major brands, starting with Rainbow Six and The Division in the near future."
The quote comes as part of Ubisoft's latest financial report, in which Guillemot says the company intends to reach a combined €2 billion annual net booking from its three biggest franchises - Assassin's Creed, Rainbow Six, and The Division - over the next five years.
The strategy for upcoming Assassin's Creed games was laid out in a September broadcast. In short, it consists of a bit of everything. You'll have traditional titles like Assassin's Creed Mirage, mobile projects like Codename Jade, and other spin-offs for platforms like Netflix. The franchise will be anchored by Assassin's Creed Infinity, a central hub from which you'll seemingly play the big new RPGs as well as the multiplayer project Invictus, which will be overseen by For Honor vets.
In other words, it's a bunch of different games on different platforms likely to use different business models, and many of them are set to be connected through some sort of central hub. It's effectively the same strategy Activision Blizzard is using with Call of Duty Mobile, Warzone, and the traditional series entries, and it's a strategy more big triple-A franchises are likely to adopt.
While we're not yet at the point of needing (or seeing) a Rainbow Six Infinity or The Division Infinity to collect all the disparate games, both franchises are starting to crowd up with new types of entries. The venerable multiplayer hit Rainbow Six Siege has recently been joined by the co-op PvE of Extraction, and Rainbow Six Mobile is on the way, too. The Division series is similarly getting a free-to-play spin-off called Heartland as well as a mobile edition called Resurgence.
Keep track of everything that's coming with our guide to all the biggest video game release dates.
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