Just as Ezio di Auditore prepares to storm Rome in this week’s Assassin’s Creed Brotherhood, Ubisoft’s launching a transmedia assault on multiple fronts. Today will see the release of Assassin’s Creed Ascendance, an animated short that bridges the gap between Assaassin’s Creed II and ACB. (More on Techland: Top 10 Failed Gaming Consoles)
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And tomorrow, the first issue of the Assassin’s Creed: The Fall miniseries will hit comic shops all over. Published by DC Comics, It takes place in both the present day and late 20th century Russia, introducing a new Assassin from times past named Nikolai Orelov and his descendant.
Both projects came from the auspices of UbiWorkshop, Ubisoft’s division tasked with finding opportunities in books, animation or other media for their existing properties. The French publisher’s gamble might even pay off, if you run the numbers on Ascendance, for example. The partially animated clip was all presumably produced internally, and looks to be more inexpensive than CGI or hand-drawn animation. As a distribution channel, the Xbox 360 provides an install base of 30 million screens. So, even if only 10% of Xbox 360 owners download Ascendance, that’s 3 million units and, at $2 (160 Microsoft points) a pop, it could still earn $6 million dollars. Not bad for a piece of content that circumvents the traditional TV production company and movie studio gatekeepers. (More on Techland: Assassins’ Creed II Action Figure Will Stab You in the Wallet)
As for the game itself, we’ve been playing ACB for the last few days here at Techland and should have a review in the next day or so.
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