Yearly releases are becoming common place for many franchises. But what is too much?
The faces of Assassin's Creed.
Two weeks ago we saw the announcement of a brand new Assassin’s Creed game. Despite my general excitement about all things pirate related, my first reaction was an uncontrolled, “Already?” AC3 still feels relatively new and really only in the beginning of its single player DLC cycle. I had always felt that the AC franchise in general had fantastic storytelling options throughout its overall lore. It has a number of time periods it can visit, telling stories of vastly different characters and yet still stays true to its canon. But yet, it’s starting to feel like we are seeing these games too often.
Clearly, AC is not the first franchise to do this. Call of Duty is that cow that Activision plans to milk as much as possible. Apart from the most recent incarnation, not a whole bunch of innovation has entered that franchise for a while. But yet, it continued to sell based on its solid multiplayer support. And who can forget the grand-daddy of all of the yearly releases, sports games. All of the major leagues have had consistent year in and year out titles. It wasn’t even that long ago where you would have competing companies releasing games for the same sport around the same time of the year. That in itself was market saturation at its peak. Clearly, none of this is a new idea.
