Assassin's Creed III creative director Alex Hutchinson has described the game as being one of the last of the big triple-A "dinosaurs".
In the latest issue of Edge (via CVG), Hutchinson claims that massive production teams the likes of which made Assassin's Creed III are becoming a thing of the past.
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.
"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," he said.
"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," Hutchinson concluded, "so a lot of us truly believed this was a once in a career opportunity."
His concerns have been echoed by others in the industry like Cliff Bleszinski who feels that the cost of developing on the next generation of hardware will stymie development. But others, such as Eidos president Ian Livingstone, have come out equally strongly saying we'll always want triple-A single-player games, and the industry must find ways to accommodate this.
What do you think? Should escalating costs mean Assassin's Creed III may be the last of its kind, or do you feel it's a worthwhile investment for companies to employ larger teams?
Luke Karmali is IGN's UK Editorial Assistant. You too can revel in mediocrity by following him on IGN and on Twitter.
Source : ign[dot]com
