Ubisoft not abandoning Xbox 360 and PS3 anytime soon

Ubisoft isn't abandoning the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 anytime soon, according to vice president of creative Lionel Raynaud. Speaking with Edge, Raynaud said Ubisoft will support those last-generation platforms for several more years.

"We will have games for PS3 and 360 for this year and probably the years after,” Raynaud said. "We want to be able to provide games to people who are playing on these consoles. [Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag] was the first Assassin's Creed game of this new generation but it was designed with that in mind, but I wouldn't say it was a cross-generation game, as it has features that could only be for this generation."

Notably, Raynaud spoke to the site ahead of the Assassin's Creed Unity announcement for Xbox One and PlayStation 4. However, his comments might lend credence to last week's report that another Assassin's Creed game, reportedly subtitled Comet, will come to Xbox 360 and PS3.

Some developers, like The Witcher studio CD Projekt Red, maintain that supporting two generations of systems for a single release means developers needs to make compromises. But Raynaud doesn't think this has to be true.

"It's a choice--even when you do a game that has old-gen and new-gen versions, we decide which one is lead," he said. "So if you decide that new gen is lead for all of your games, then you have no restrictions at all--you're just saying that the other generation will maybe not be able to have everything but still be a better game than we're used to having on this generation. We never made choices on Assassin's Creed or Watch Dogs where because we have this other generation we couldn't put something in the game. It would be a very bad call from a company and brand perspective."

Finally, Raynaud said Ubisoft developers have been busy over the past year discovering new ways to leverage the power of the Xbox One and PS4 to make games that not only have better visuals, but also deep online connectivity and features.

"The team that has been working on PS4 and Xbox One on Black Flag have already learned and they are still learning," he said. "It’s not only about visuals, it's going to be about connectivity and the fact that these consoles are always online. That allows us to create more surprising experiences that exploit that. It's going to be a long progression, because each generation brings new potential. We will be able to measure that as the dev team master the new technology. This will keep on improving for a very long time, actually."