Assassin's Creed Infinity live service game confirmed as future of the franchise

Earlier today, Bloomberg published an interesting report in which it claimed that Ubisoft was planning to transition the Assasin's Creed series to a live service model rather than releasing new games every couple of years. What followed after that report was arguably even more interesting, as Ubisoft dropped official confirmation of the game right in our laps. So Assassin's Creed Infinity is indeed a real thing, though according to Ubisoft, the game is still in the very early stages of development.

Unfortunately, Ubisoft's announcement today doesn't include a ton of details about the game. Instead, it mostly covers who will be in charge of Infinity, with Ubisoft's Montreal and Quebec studios collaborating on the project under the leadership of Marc-Alexis Côté, who has been named executive producer of the Assassin's Creed franchise. Julien Laferrière from Ubisoft Montreal will be the game's senior producer. At the same time, Jonathan Dumont and Clint Hocking will serve as co-creative directors and oversee Ubisoft Quebec and Ubisoft Montreal teams, respectively.

Ubisoft confirmed today that Assassin's Creed Infinity is still an "early-in-development project" and also revealed that the Infinity moniker is just a codename for the game. Both teams have a history of developing Assassin's Creed titles, as do the individuals who have been given leadership positions on this game.

"Rather than continuing to pass the baton from game to game, we profoundly believe this is an opportunity for one of Ubisoft's most beloved franchises to evolve in a more integrated and collaborative manner that's less centered on studios and more focused on talent and leadership, no matter where they are within Ubisoft," the company said in today's announcement.

Of course, Bloomberg's report from earlier today paints a rather shaky picture, revealing some degree of strife between the development teams at Ubisoft's Montreal and Quebec studios. Bloomberg's sources also suggested that Ubisoft's response to sexual harassment and abuse allegations about high-level executives wasn't good enough, which wasn't mentioned in Ubisoft's announcement today.

So, it seems that the future of the Assassin's Creed franchise is a live service one. Ubisoft says that it will have more details about Infinity and new content for Assassin's Creed Valhalla in the future, so we'll keep an ear to the ground for more. However, considering that Assassin's Creed Infinity is still early on in development – and assuming that Bloomberg's reports of internal problems are indeed accurate – we probably won't hear more about Infinity for some time to come.