In an interview with Game Informer, Serge Hascoet (Chief Creative Officer, or CCO, at Ubisoft) talked about several hot topics. One of these was the Battle Royale trend, with Ubisoft apparently not that interested in following up on it. They're rather focused on doing something different that may be just as disruptive.
We don't do as well in mobile because competitors are better than us. Now, everybody is talking about battle royale, but we think there are 15 different companies making those games, and like mobile, only two will be successful. Many will be killed along the way; I don't know which ones will survive. I am working with my team on what's next. It's important to understand why games like Fortnite are so successful, but it's not so we can copy it. It's to do something else, but with the same disruptive approach. So, we have plenty of ideas. We are testing a lot of ideas internally, and maybe only one will go to market.
Hascoet also suggested that Ubisoft is still interested in adding some kind of multiplayer to future Assassin's Creed installments.
We have many technologies, so it's case by case, but Assassin’s Creed has no multiplayer mode, and that is very important for the social aspect of gaming, so we are looking for that. Also, when you want to change something in the world in our games, right now the player has to download 20GB.
I want our game to become a place where there are many changes and new events. Even in Assassin's Creed. We have to change our games’ agility. We have to consider mobile crossovers. There are millions of changes I would make. For example, the number of players. Today, our online technology could support 100 players, but at what cost? If we remove the crowd and stuff like that in Assassin's Creed we could make online easier ... it's a case by case basis. If a project needs 100 players at the same time then we can do it, but we need to find the added value.
Assassin's Creed Brotherhood was the first game to feature multiplayer in the franchise. The last one was Unity, though that was focused solely on cooperative gameplay.
Would you like to see multiplayer once again in Assassin's Creed? In related news, Odyssey (out today if you've purchased the Ultimate Edition) will be the first game to use Google's Project Stream.
