Assassin's Creed IV - Black Flag - Freedom Cry - 5

Call of Duty and Madden are the poster children for series that release a new entry every year, but as the trend continues to prove lucrative, they are slowly being joined by others. One of the other popular series to make the jump to such frequent releases has been Assassin's Creed, and Ubisoft's VP of Creative Lionel Raynaud believes it would be "stupid" to ignore that demand.

Raynaud would not comment while speaking with Edge on the rumor spreading around that two original games would be released this year, an unnamed one for the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3, and Assassin's Creed Unity for the Xbox One and PlayStation 4, but he did have this to say on the company's new strategy with the series.

"We are able to offer people a new Assassin's Creed every year because they want Assassin's Creed every year…As long as this is true we would be very stupid to not satisfy this need, but it puts a lot of pressure on us to create something that will never disappoint.

It needs to keep the series core values and we need to really make sure that we have a good, high level understanding of what it is to be an Assassin. We have to make sure we always deliver a better feel and overall experience every time while still bringing something that they haven't seen before that's consistent with being an Assassin in the world we've created."

Once upon a time, I considered myself a fan of the Assassin's Creed series, but I slowly fell behind with the releases after Assassin's Creed II, and I never caught up. Now it just seems hard to jump into each game because unlike the Final Fantasy series and other long running franchises, Assassin's Creed has an overarching story that never seems to end. It might be less interesting than the individual storylines of each game's historical settings, but it's still there.

Raynaud also confirmed that support for the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 would continue this year and probably the years after.

I get that this makes Ubisoft a lot of money and Assassin's Creed has a lot of fans, but I find annual releases for such complex games too impenetrable. Tough mechanics and an open-world make it far too big of an experience to grind through every year, unlike the pick up and play nature of Madden and Call of Duty.