Assassin’s Creed Infinity isn’t a free-to-play game, Ubisoft boss says

Assassin’s Creed Infinity, the service-game sequel outed by a Bloomberg report this summer, is not a free-to-play game, Ubisoft chief executive Yves Guillemot told investors in a quarterly update call on Thursday.

“It’s not going to be a free-to-play [game],” Guillemot said. “This game is going to have a lot of narrative elements in it. It’s going to be a very innovative game, but it will have what players already have in all the other Assassin’s Creed games, all the elements that they love.”

Guillemot went on to assure listeners that “it’s going to be a huge game.” Later in the call, Infinity was said to be in an early development phase.

In a statement on July 7, Ubisoft confirmed it was working on Assassin’s Creed Infinity. shortly after Bloomberg reported that the company was looking to take its powerhouse franchise in the same direction as Take-Two Interactive’s Grand Theft Auto and Red Dead Redemption franchises.

Marc-Alexis Côté, Ubisoft’s executive producer for the Assassin’s Creed franchise, is leading development on Infinity, which the publisher said is a “cross-studio, collaborative” project.

Guillemot’s clarification on Thursday is noteworthy because, in May, the company’s chief financial officer told investors the company was turning its attention to persistent, free-to-play adaptations of its franchises, with the recently announced Tom Clancy’s The Division Heartland as one example. Ubisoft quickly followed those statements with reassurances that it remained committed to traditional, full-size games like Far Cry 6 and Riders Republic, both of which launched in the past month.

In the same call, Ubisoft mentioned, without clarification, that The Division Heartland is delayed. That game’s original announcement called for a launch either at the end of this year or in 2022. The Prince of Persia: Sands of Time remake is also delayed, Ubisoft told investors, but that game has been delayed indefinitely since February. The Prince of Persia official Twitter feed yesterday posted another statement saying development “is still under way, motivated and inspired by your feedback.”