This morning Ubisoft held their Ubisoft Forward event and announced Assassin’s Creed Mirage to the world. Oddly, Ubisoft included a mention of Stadia in the news release but not the main website…
After seeing Stadia on the news sites, we originally called the game as coming to Stadia but Ubisoft appears to have updated the text (possibly twice?) to remove mention of Stadia.
Their social media account has since stated the following in response to our team’s question:
That doesn’t sound great, but there is certainly a lot of room for it to be announced for Stadia at a later date in that answer – phraseology like “at the moment”, “if that ever changes there will be a post”.
So, what gives??
We think there is likely no technological reason this hasn’t been announced (the game engine already supports Linux, Vulkan Stadia). Some of the reasons we can think of for the lack of a Stadia announcement (yet) are:
1. The game’s release date (which could be over a year away) may fall outside of the dates for the current contract Stadia and Ubisoft have in place. The parties could be in negotiations – the outcome of which could be uncertain. (somewhat likely)
2. The two parties could be planning to announce Mirage coming to Stadia at a future event when they think they can get more attention – for example, alongside a number of other Stadia announcements or along Stadia specific features. (somewhat likely)
3. Ubisoft could be launching their own cloud service on top of Google Immersive Stream similar to their Luna channel. Doing this and not releasing on Stadia proper would be unfortunate for Stadia achievement hunters and people who enjoy all the Stadia platform features. There is no reason why Ubisoft couldn’t do both if they go this route. (a little unlikely but definitely possible)
4. Amazon Luna could have paid for cloud exclusivity for the game. This doesn’t really seem to be Ubisoft’s style. It also doesn’t really match Amazon and Ubisoft’s relationship. For example, an exclusive Ubisoft Plus game doesn’t really help Luna Plus subs. (unlikely but still possible)
Our advice? Stay calm, play some games that are on Stadia, be patient and wait and see how things play out.
