Assassin’s Creed Shadows is one of 2025’s biggest games. With over three million players and mostly positive reviews from fans old and new, the latest game in the open world series was the exact sort of hit publisher Ubisoft needed after back-to-back flops. Now, Ubisoft is taking the lessons it learned with Shadows’ and is now looking to replicate it with its other future titles.
During its company earnings call this week, Ubisoft co-founder and CEO Yves Guillemot confirmed that several games currently in development for its key franchises will get substantial delays.
“After a review of our pipeline, we have decided to provide additional development time to some of our biggest productions in order to create the best conditions for success,” Guillemot said, later adding how beneficial the decision was for Assassin’s Creed Shadows.
While Ubisoft stopped short of mentioning what titles would be part of those delays, we can assume that its biggest ongoing productions include work on the next Assassin’s Creed, Far Cry, Ghost Recon, Rainbow Six, and The Division games. The delay would mean that these games wouldn’t be close to finished until at least mid-2026.
Assassin’s Creed Shadows was delayed three times in the lead-up to its release to ensure it would be released in as polished a state as possible. The game’s delay came on the heels of Star Wars Outlaws’ buggy launch, which hurt critical review scores and fan reception of the game. Outlaws’ developer Massive Entertainment is still updating the game, adding features that would have been appreciated if they were implemented before launch.
While delays do add some significant wait time before we see the proper returns of its most popular series like Far Cry, there are several other games the publisher has announced in the past that could finally see the light of day during this down period. It confirmed that one of the games we can expect in the next year is the long-awaited remake of Prince Of Persia: The Sands of Time. The game is now set to drop in March 2026, the first solid release window the game has had since it was announced five years ago.
In fact, Ubisoft has numerous remakes slated for the future. There’s the remake of the original Splinter Cell game that the company announced more than three years ago that has yet to see the light of day. And then there’s a yet-to-be-announced but definitely real remake of Assassin’s Creed 4: Black Flag, which is rumored to release sometime in the next year. There’s plenty to fill the blockbuster void as its mainline titles get the time they deserve. And that’s before we learn about other unannounced projects it might have in the works right now.
It’s great to see Ubisoft taking a step back and realizing everything it did right with Shadows. Even to someone who was a little less positive about the game than most, I found the game’s level of polish shined in a way that most other open-world games, including their own, don’t. Ubisoft Quebec was afforded time to doing the best work it could, and the result was a game that millions of people embraced.
It seems like a no-brainer to apply the same winning strategy to its future titles, but we can’t exactly say that game companies are typically wise enough to pinpoint the reasons for their successes. Ubisoft has already penned a deal with Chinese publisher Tencent in hopes of securing financial stability for the future. But doubling down on delivering quality products is a promise and strategy that should affect players in a positive way more directly.
As of now, Ubisoft has quite the slate of new, smaller releases ahead. This week, it released the next expansion for Star Wars Outlaws, titled A Pirate’s Fortune. Later this year, Shadows will get its own expansion, titled The Claws Of Awaji. The expansion will pick up after the main game’s epilogue and will include new abilities, new enemies, and a brand new weapon exclusive to Naoe — a bo staff. It is set to add an additional 10 hours of gameplay.
