Ubisoft
Shadows of Assassin's Creedthe highly anticipated next major release in the popular open-world historical gaming franchise, has been delayed from its previously announced release date of November 15, 2024.
The new date is February 14, 2025, according to an open letter sent to X by franchise executive producer Marc-Alexis Côté. “We realize that we need more time to polish and refine the experience, further pushing some of our key features,” Côté wrote. “We have therefore made the decision to postpone the release date.”
He went on to promise a same-day release on Steam and also on console platforms around that time.
Côté wrote the note to players, but a letter from publisher Ubisoft to investors went into more detail. “While the game is feature-complete, the lessons from the Star Wars Outlaws “The launch prompted us to spend more time further polishing the title,” he says. “This will allow the biggest entry in the franchise to fully live up to its ambition, in particular by fulfilling the promise of our dual-protagonist adventure, with Naoe and Yasuke bringing two very different playstyles.” (It was previously announced that the game allows players to play as two characters: a samurai warrior and a stealthy assassin.)
The investor note also says that “the game will mark the return of our new releases on Steam Day 1,” so that's a positive for PC gamers.
A precarious position
The massive budget Star Wars Outlaws It was positioned as an “Assassin’s Creed game, but in the Star Wars universe” and launched on August 30. However, it was met with a mixed reception. Gamers, critics, and streamers praised its meticulous, high-fidelity presentation of Star Wars locations and characters, but criticized its stealth gameplay for being repetitive and frustrating.
Among other things, the game featured lengthy stealth sequences that forced players to start over if they were spotted, but it didn't do a good job of providing players with the information and tools they needed to complete these sequences without resorting to trial and error. Shortly after launch, one of the game's creative leads promised a patch (which arrived) that would fix one of the earlier missions, but his suggestion in an interview that the problem was simply due to a single mission early in the game rather than anything more fundamental rang hollow to many players.
Ubisoft publicly acknowledged that Star Wars Outlaws It did not meet expectations in either sales or critical reception.
It's not clear exactly what lessons Ubisoft intends to learn from the failure of Star Wars OutlawsBut Assassin's Creed is its biggest franchise, so after a setback like that, the company can't afford anything but an enthusiastic reception for it. Darkness of the players. It is the first blockbuster release of the historic franchise in four years.
Of course, this delay now means that Ubisoft's open-world samurai game will be released the same year as Ghost of Yoteia sequel to Sony's exclusive big-budget open-world samurai game called The Ghost of Tsushima which many players felt did more justice to the Assassin's Creed formula than most Ubisoft titles. Darkness It will also be released just a few months before the planned launch of Grand Theft Auto VIwhich will probably suck all the oxygen out of the gaming room for some time. There is still some chance that GTA 6 However, it will be delayed.
This is the first time an Assassin's Creed game from the main franchise has been delayed in a decade; the last delay was Assassin's Creed Unitywhose release date was delayed from October 28, 2014 to November 11. Despite the delay, that game launched with significant technical issues, which were mostly fixed in later updates.