Assassin's Creed 3 Development Was a "Rare Opportunity"

Assassin's Creed III on PS3 is one of the triple-A titles heading to the system this Holiday season, alongside a certain Activision behemoth, of course. It's undoubtedly a big budget title, with a lengthy development period and a big team from across Ubisoft's various studios. Yet, as new hardware emerges in the next couple of years there are concerns that titles such as this will become rarer, as the reality of the budgets required for blockbuster games starts to take hold.

Assassin's Creed 3 creative director Alex Hutchinson had this in mind when talking to Edge Magazine in its latest issue (as reported by computerandvideogames.com). With a reported 600 staff working on the title during nearly three years of development, it's easy to understand why such projects may become less common in the future.

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.

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; and the installed user base for all platforms is massive.

Many of these factors are about to change, by choice of circumstance, so a lot of us truly believed this was a once in a career opportunity.

With budgets for blockbuster games going ever higher, how do you feel about a possible future with less triple-A titles to enjoy?