Jandau said:
Could it be that trying to put out yearly sequels leaves developers with too little time to... you know.. DEVELOP the game? Why not take 2-3 years to properly develop a title, polish the design, make sure the mechanics are working well, maybe add in new features and expand on existing ones, optimize the software for all the platforms and thereby get the best performance out of the hardware available?
Oh yes, because charging $60 once every two years is half as much money as charging $60 every year...
Much like how Call of Duty has multiple development studios working on it, so too does AC. They get more than a year to make each game, and Unity has likely been in development for at least 2 years, possibly more. It still probably could have used more time anyway though, as the recent release of Advanced Warfare shows, the multiple team cycle worked fine for AC and CoD, but it seems to fall apart with the transition to a new console generation, the team probably could have used more time to learn and develop the new engine rather than just the game itself.
With the advance to a new generation, these yearly release games are likely suffering from being unable to just rely on making small modifications to the old graphics engine, like how pretty much every CoD game is running off a modified Modern Warfare IW engine, and AC is running off a heavily modified Anvil engine that's been used since AC 1. Even Unity and Advanced Warfare are running off the same engines that have been used for years, appropriately modified and improved for advancing tech of course, but at some point these graphics engines that have been around since 2007 will need to be either completely replaced or given massive overhauls.
