Ubisoft Officially Leaves Last Gen Consoles Behind, Teases New Mystery Game

The annual Ubisoft end-of-year fiscal earnings call brought some interesting news from the publisher, including a mystery game due in the next fiscal year and the official end of the publisher's support of last-gen consoles.

While the company isn't completely abandoning the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3, the Just Dance series will still launch for them, the rest of Ubisoft's prime franchises including Assassin's Creed, Rainbow Six, and The Division will all launch on the Xbox One and PlayStation 4 only. If you're an Ubisoft fan and you haven't upgraded yet, now it is the time.

"On Just Dance, we will continue to bring old-gen console versions," Ubisoft CEO Yves Guillemot said on the earnings call, according to VG24/7. "But on the other products like Assassin’s Creed, Rainbow Six, The Division, and the unannounced franchise, we will not have old-gen versions.”

Speaking of that unannounced franchise, according to Gamespot, Guillemot also mentioned that a brand new AAA title would be launching in the next fiscal year, which ends in March of 2016. While Guillemot did not elaborate on what that game is, or more importantly if it's a brand new IP or an upcoming sequel, he did say that it would be announced in the fall and not at E3 2015 next month.

Easy speculation has Watch Dogs 2 in the running, especially after that title popped up on a programmer's resume on LinkedIn a few weeks ago. If you ask us, the timing doesn't work. The game will not be announced until the fall, let's call it late September/early October, and Guillemot has assured us it will launch by the end of fiscal year 2016, which is March 31. Ubisoft loves announcing big titles with enough time to drive up pre-order sales, so why would they only give themselves half a year to drive up interest on a major IP's first sequel? We think it'll be a digital title of some kind, perhaps a new Rayman or something like that.

As for saying goodbye to last gen, we knew the day would come where all of the big publishers would focus on the present and leave the past behind. We're not surprised that Ubisoft is the first one to do so after the nightmare of bugs and glitches that plagued their major releases last year. With the majority of their manpower now focused on the current generation, we can only hope that means a cleaner and more efficient gaming experience.