Ubisoft increases number of Assassin’s Creed developers by 40% as sales plummet

Assassin's Creed Mirage key art — Assassin’s Creed Mirage – one of many (pic: Ubisoft)

As new leaks emerge, Ubisoft has announced it will almost double the number of developers working on its six new Assassin’s Creed games.

There are currently no less than six Assassin’s Creed games in development and possibly anything up to to 11, and yet as far as Ubisoft is concerned that’s still not enough.

They’ve increased the number of people working on the franchise by 40%, so either existing projects are about to get a major staff boost or there’s even more new games that we don’t know about yet.

The reason? In their latest financial quarter net booking (revenues, more or less) were down by 18%, when Ubisoft had previously predicted they’d only drop by 10%. And yet at the same time Assassin’s Creed had its best year ever in terms of active years, despite Assassin’s Cree Valhalla being well over two years old now.

It’s been a difficult few years for Ubisoft, with a series of underperforming games, and yet Assassin’s Cree Valhalla did far better than was ever expected.

That makes it easy to understand why they’re doubling down on it now, but it’s still unclear when the next entry will be released, with rumours suggesting that Assassin’s Creed Mirage has been delayed multiple times already this year.

The latest suggestion is that the release date is October 12, but with the possibility of it being pushed back to November.

These new dates come from a source in France, who reiterates the idea that the game initially started as DLC for Valhalla but, much like this year’s rumoured Call Of Duty game, was upgraded to a full release.

The setting is Baghdad, which is said to have a map bigger than Paris in Unity. It’s long been reported that Mirage will be a homage to the original Assassin’s Creed, with none of the god-like powers from Valhalla and its DLC, no dialogue choices, and a focus on stealth.

Few of these details are new but it’s believed that the leaked information comes from a broken embargo, which means both it and the release date are accurate – at least for now.