Assassin's Creed Infinity won't be free-to-play, Ubisoft confirms
Worth a stab.
Assassin's Creed Infinity, the mysterious next entry in Ubisoft's historical stabathon series, will not be a free-to-play game.
Ubisoft boss Yves Guillemot confirmed this point last night during the company's latest investor earning call (thanks, Gamespot), when asked for more information on the project.
It's an important point to note for two reasons - one, because Infinity will be a different kind of project that shakes up the franchise's formula after a trilogy of enormous-sized releases, and two, because of Ubisoft's recently-stated push for its AAA franchises to enter the free-to-play space.
"It's not going to be a free-to-play [game]," Guillemot said. "This game is going to have a lot of narrative elements in it. It's going to be very innovative game, but it will have what players already have in all the other Assassin's Creed games, all the elements that they love... right from the start. So it's going to be a huge game. But with lots of elements that already exist in the games that we published in the past."
There's not a lot of information yet on Infinity because Ubisoft only formally acknowledged the game's existance this summer, after Bloomberg surfaced early details of its existence.
That report suggested it would be a new platform for the franchise, with distinct sections developed by both of the franchise's two core teams at Ubisoft Montreal (Origins, Valhalla) and Ubisoft Quebec (Syndicate, Odyssey), with the main hub of the project overseen by the latter, all of which would evolve over time.
Ubisoft subsequently confirmed Infinity was in development, and noted its individual components would be developed by Clint Hocking, formerly of Splinter Cell and Watch Dogs Legion, who will lead the team at Montreal, and Jonathan Dumont, a veteran of Assassin's Creed Syndicate and Odyssey, who will lead the team at Ubisoft Quebec.
The umbrella Infinity project that will include these parts will be led by Marc-Alexis Côté, who will now serve as executive producer of the entire Assassin's Creed franchise. Côté worked on Brotherhood before becoming creative director on Syndicate, and is one of the most senior staff at Ubisoft Quebec.
Infinity is still "early", Guillemot added last night, and isn't expected for several years. In the meantime, there's a second year of additions coming to the hugely-successful Assassin's Creed Valhalla on the way, with the next big expansion due before March 2022.
As for Ubisoft's previously-announced free-to-play plans for its AAA franchises, the publisher said last night it had delayed the arrival of Tom Clancy's The Division Heartland.