The Assassin’s Creed franchise is as big as they get when it comes to blockbuster AAA titles. The highly competitive AAA game development business may soon be a thing of the past, according to Assassin’s Creed 3 creative director Alex Hutchinson.
Hutchinson recently went on the record to discuss the state of the AAA market, and thinks that games like Assassin’s Creed 3 are a dying breed. In an interview with EDGE, Hutchinson explained:
“We’re the last of the dinosaurs. We’re still the monster triple-A game with very large teams and multiple studios helping out on different bits. There are fewer and fewer of these games being made, especially as the middle has fallen out,” Hutchinson said. “We really felt like this was a rare opportunity. We had an experienced team, who had worked on the franchise for a while; we had the full backing of Ubisoft to make something huge. We had almost three years to do it, which is a rarity these days; the tech and the hardware platforms were both mature, which allowed us to start running instead of building base features.”
While Hutchinson may have been speaking directly about Assassin’s Creed 3 in the interview, there’s still quite a few “dinosaurs” out there that are doing quite well for themselves. Just inside Ubisoft alone, the company has numerous big name titles that are due to drop outside of Assassin’s. Far Cry 3 is due out later this year, and is definitely AAA. Splinter Cell: Blacklist is another franchise that has a huge following for many years running. Outside of Ubisoft, Activision, Epic Games, 343 Industries, EA and others have a strong lineup of games due out in the coming years that could definitely be considered “AAA”.
Perhaps we’ll see the day when tablet, mobile, and social gaming tap the wallets of “hardcore” gamers, but until they can replicate the living room experience, we’re more than happy to have these dinosaurs around for some time to come.
