Assassin’s Creed Coming to All Current Generation Consoles… or Is It?

There are some days where I’d love nothing more than to slap the taste out of a publisher’s proverbial mouth. And today is one of those days.

Generally speaking, I like Ubisoft. I don’t love, but I don’t hate them, either; they made the Rabbids and Rayman, so that’s good enough for me. But with their so-called “official announcement” of Assassin’s Creed, they’re just getting on my nerves.

Their short-but-bittersweet press release is as follows:

UBISOFT® UNVEILS ASSASSIN’S CREED® II

SAN FRANCISCO – April 16, 2009 – Today Ubisoft announced that Ubisoft Montreal is developing Assassin’s Creed II on all current-generation platforms for a scheduled Holiday 2009 release. The initial installment of Assassin’s Creed® was released in November 2007 to popular and critical success, selling 8 million copies worldwide and garnering awards such as Best Action Game 2007 from 1UP and Outstanding Achievement in Animation from the AIAS.

Assassin’s Creed II is the product of over two years of intensive development by the original creative team behind the Assassin’s Creed brand. In a vast open world environment, the game invites players to incarnate Ezio, a privileged young noble in Renaissance Italy who’s been betrayed by the rival ruling families of Italy. Ezio’s subsequent quest for vengeance plunges players into a captivating and epic story that offers more variety in missions, surprising and engaging new gameplay elements, diverse weapons and a profound character progression that will appeal to fans of the original Assassin’s Creed as well as entice players new to the brand.

“Our creative team is working hard to top the experience of Assassin’s Creed,” said Patrice Desilets, creative director at Ubisoft. “We’ve made improvements to every aspect of the game. We’ve plunged ourselves into the stunning history of the Italian Renaissance so that we can offer fans a unique, varied and innovative Assassin’s Creed experience.”

Additional details on Assassin’s Creed II are revealed in the May issue of Game Informer.

“All current generation platforms,” huh? Well, to any logically-minded person, that means the Xbox 360, the PlayStation 3, the Wii, the Nintendo DS, and the PlayStation Portable. However, that was just a bit too vague for me to create five separate profiles across all of Kombo’s sub-sections, and so I held off until they would actually say what they were making the games for.

And as luck would have it, patience was indeed a virtue.

MTV Multiplayer couldn’t decipher what that BS was supposed to mean, either, and so they managed to get an answer back from Ubisoft “about whether ‘Assassin’s Creed’ fans should consider the Wii to be in the current gen.” And their reply?

“We have only announced Xbox 360, PS3, PC and PSP.”

Oh yeah?

No. No you have not. Not in the press release, not in your trailer, and not on your little website did you ever “announce” such a thing.

Maybe in the Game Informer story, but I don’t have that, and I’m not sure it really counts, anyway.

So, yes, this entire thing has been rather irksome, and it still is on their double-talk of “for everything current, only not.” At least now there’s something actually said about it, and I’ve created the profiles as per the systems named above. And along with it, that means I finally have a place to put that pic of Ezio they sent out; you can find it in each system’s respective gallery, as well as below.

Seriously, this whole thing about “we haven’t announced it yet” is a real pain in the rump, and it got old as soon as companies started doing it. How about “no plans?” I liked that one a lot better.

With all the multiplatform stuff being published these days, it’s really nice to be specific, especially for those of us who have to write about it. Arbitrarily excluding platforms from a statement like “all current generation” doesn’t help, either.

Anyway, here’s the picture. Enjoy.