14 DAY TRIAL // Ubisoft intended to circumvent the Watch Dogs visual downgrade controversy with the upcoming Assassin's Creed Unity by making the game next-gen only and making sure to only reveal it once it was almost complete.
In a recent interview with CVG, Senior Producer Vincent Pontbriand has revealed that, in order to faithfully model the sprawling Paris and incorporate cooperative gameplay into the traditionally single-player campaign, the development team decided to cut ties with the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 and their humongous user bases and focus on next-gen development only.
Watch Dogs failed to meet the public's expectations, the difference in visual quality of the final product when compared to the gameplay footage shown during the game's reveal during E3 2012 being significant. Ubisoft tried not to repeat the mistake, Assassins' Creed Unity so far looking pretty impressive.
"It's a simple answer - we've taken the risk in our decision to be next-gen only. So we don't have to worry about the previous generation of hardware - we can focus on targeting the new hardware and trying to make the best out of that. And also, we're at E3, we're coming out this year, we're just a few months from release. You need to show what you're actually going to ship at E3, that's important for us," Pontbriand has answered when asked how Ubisoft managed to pull off with ACU what it couldn't with Watch Dogs.