assassins-creed posts

It was one of the highest selling games of 2007 (and it wasn't even a sequel). It was Assassin's Creed and the Ubisoft developed-and-published open world action game set in the Middle Ages (but not really) came out for the PC in April 2008. Now Ubisoft is teasing us with some new images at the game's official site that signals the publisher's first marketing of the sequel.

Yep, Ubisoft is prepping a follow-up to the game (shocker, we know) and the first teaser images seem to link Assassin's Creed 2 to Leonardo Da Vinci (which makes us wonder if Tom Hanks is wandering around the game) . We shouldn't have much longer to get the full scoop on the sequel. The web site teases (via a mirror text) that more info will be revealed in the next Game Informer print issue.

Steam users are used to getting sales on the weekend for one or two games but this week Steam's operators Valve are doing something a little different as they plan to put one game on sale every day. All of the game's come from Ubisoft's catalog of titles.

Today the first of these games have been put on sale. For today only you can purchase and download the PC port of the stealth action game Assassin's Creed for $9.99. That's a 50 percent discount off its normal Steam price of $19.99. Again this sale price is for today only with another Ubisoft game put on sale on Tuesday and so on until Friday.

The NPD Group has released its latest list of the top 10 best selling PC games, this time for the week ending Nov. 29. That happens to include the "Black Friday" shopping date and because of this a number of older PC games that got big discounts found themselves back for one week only on the list.

Among the reappearences: Bioshock, Assassins's Creed and The Sims 2 Deluxe, all of which had Black Friday discounts at one or more retailers. Blizzard's MMO expansion pack World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King still hit the number one spot for the week, which proves that Blizzard fans still want their game no matter what the price.

1. World Of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King - Blizzard
2. The Sims 2 Double Deluxe - Electronic Arts
3. Spore - Electronic Arts
4. BioShock - 2K Games
5. The Sims 2 Deluxe - Electronic Arts
6. Left 4 Dead - Valve/EA
7. Call Of Duty: World At War - Activision
8. Assassin's Creed - Ubisoft
9. World Of Warcraft: Battle Chest - Blizzard
10. The Sims 2 Apartment Life - Electronic Arts

It's not a shock to learn that Ubisoft is working on a sequel to their open world action game Assasin's Creed. The first game in the series (released for consoles a year ago and for the PC last April) sold several million copies worldwide. Our sister site Joystiq reports that in this week's conference call with financial analysts, Ubisoft execs stated the sequel is in production and is due out sometime in Ubisoft's 2010 fiscal year which actually begins April 1, 2009.

Once more, Giant Bomb reports that during a taping of an episode of Gametrailers.com's Bonus Round series, financial analyst Michael Pachter revealed that according to his sources the sequel will change historical time periods to the 1700s rather than the original's time frame of 1191 (of course people who have actually played the game know that things are not what they appear to be in the title).

It's hard enough that PC games get pirated and are made available over the Internet after the game ships. It's even harder when a publisher has to deal with a leak that happens before the game is released. One example is the PC port of Ubisoft's action game Assassin's Creed which was made available on pirate locations on the Internet several weeks before its planned April 2008 release.

Now Gamespot reports that Ubisoft is going after a company that it claims helped to release that leaked version of the game. The story states that Ubisoft is suing Charlotte, NC based Optical Experts Manufacturing who was in charge of duplicating the game on PC disk for shipment to stores. Apparently one of their employees managed to gain access to the game and made the port available on the Internet. Ubisoft states this was in violation of OEM's own security measures. According to Ubisoft that pirate leak was downloaded 700,000 times which cost Ubisoft millions of dollars in sales. So far OEM has yet to comment on the lawsuit.

We mentioned earlier today that this is the season for earnings to be revealed by publicly traded companies including game publishers. Today Ubisoft released their latest numbers for their first fiscal quarter which ended June 30. Revenues were €169 million for the time period, up from €134 million for the same period a year ago and exceeding Ubisoft's previous expectations. The sales figures were helped in part by the release of the PC game ports of Rainbow Six Vegas 2 and Assassin's Creed.

Sales for the current quarter are expected to come in at €169 million, a 25 percent increase from the same period the year before as expectations are high for the release of the WWII shooter Brothers in Arms: Hell's Highway. One piece of expected bad news was that the long-delayed Splinter Cell Conviction has now been pushed into Ubisoft's 2009-2010 fiscal year which begins on April 1, 2009.

Coincidentally, Ubisoft recently announced that it would opt to space out future Assassin's Creed releases instead of putting out a new game every year. The declining sales of the Prince of Persia sequels were proof that gamers can grow wary of game franchises. Technical issues are often blamed for Spore's numerous delays. It's a slow progression, but development companies are coming to the realization that slow and steady wins the race, while dashing out to milk a franchise for all its worth doesn't always work.

Can games afford to stay in development indefinitely? How long does it take before interest starts to fall? Does it always have to be a choice between quality and timeliness? Sound-off after the jump.

Ubisoft (Assassin's Creed, Prince of Persia) is letting its gourmet franchises cook in the oven of public anticipation before releasing new titles, according to Forbes. The business publication said the publisher is "patient enough to allow its brands to grow slowly so gamers don't tire of them."

Forbes posited that Ubisoft is doing this because it has learned from past mistakes. When Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time became a best-selling hit, the company rolled out two sequels (Warrior Within, The Two Thrones) in rapid succession to capitalize on the brand. Neither follow-up achieved the smash success of the first game.

Ubisoft then decided to give customers a breather, and has waited three years to release the next Prince of Persia game. It plans to use the same strategy with Assassin's Creed, which was the industry's all-time best selling game from a totally new IP. The president of Ubisoft North America said:"When we bring it back, there will be more anticipation for it."

[Via Joystiq]

Mega64 is a street theater group that re-enacts video games in public places, making them "embarrassingly real." Those re-enactments are recorded on video and displayed on the internet. Previously, the troupe has acted out Hitman, Resident Evil 4, and Ico, among others. One of their videos even guest starred Shigeru Miyamoto! Their latest is based on Assassin's Creed, and it's one of their best yet. We've it embedded here for your viewing pleasure.

This one is particularly brilliant. In the game, Altair performs all these actions in order to keep a low profile. In fact, that's the whole shtick of the game -- blending in. Apparently, though, the activities don't work so well in the real world! If we'd seen this man at our local market, we'd have immediately yelled "Assassin!" in a bad Arabic accent!

Ubisoft has had a terrific last few years with a number of best selling games to its credit. Now the company has revealed exactly how many games its various franchises have sold over the years. According to a Gamesindustry.biz article the top seller is their Rayman series which have sold a whopping 22 million copies. The next three spots are all games based on the Tom Clancy brand (Rainbow Six, Splinter Cell, and Ghost Recon) which together have sold a total of 55 million copies. No wonder Ubisoft wanted to buy the full rights to the Tom Clancy name.

The rest of the list shows some interesting figures such as Assassin's Creed selling six million total copies despite only being released for less than a year and the Brothers in Arms franchise selling 5 million copies over the years. Oddly enough, Ubisoft added the Driver franchise to the list with 14 million copies. However the vast majority of those games were sold by its previous owner Infogrames/Atari (Ubisoft bought the franchise and its developer, Reflections Interactive, in 2006).