The next Assassin’s Creed isn’t coming to Stadia — it may be time to panic
Alright, folks, it’s time for some doom and gloom. That’s right; I’m here to talk about Stadia, and guess what? Even though Ubisoft has been busy launching games on the platform since thefirst test run in 2019, the developer hasrevealed to Axios Gamingthat it won’t be bringing Assassin’s Creed Mirage to Stadia. Couple this issue with the likely possibility Stadia won’t be getting anywhere close to hitting its 100-game yearly goal for releases, with less than 50 total games under its belt as of this September, and it’s evident Stadia is struggling.
What does this mean for the users?
Well, first and foremost, it means nobody on Stadia will be playing the next Assassin’s Creed game on the platform. Say what you will about AC games playing similarly to previous titles year after year; the latest game in the series not coming to Stadia is an incredibly bad look for Google. While games not coming to Stadia is hardly news in 2022, seeing how most AAAs quickly learned to avoid the platform, Ubisoft has been the rock, the one constant of Stadia still bringing AAAs to the platform, and it looks like its support is starting to falter. After all, the very first title the public tested on Stadia (back when it was still Project Stream) was an Assassin’s Creed game. And today’s news is doubly worrying as Ubisoft has been an ardent supporter of Stadia up to this point, as one of the last remaining AAAs launching games on the platform.
Don’t stress, more Ubisoft games are coming to Stadia
Of course, Ubisoft has gone out of its way to let people know it still plans to bring more games to Stadia this year, like Skull & Bones and Just Dance 2023, so it’s not like the dev is publicly ditching Stadia yet, though you have to wonder how many more titles will come from Ubisoft after the few that are already announced are released.
Perhaps there’s more to the story
Something else to consider is that many of Ubisoft’s games don’t run all that well on the platform, most capped at 4K 30FPS at the high end, often with visible frame drops throughout down into the twenty’s and teens (even the ports that do support 60FPS at 1080p can’t hold this framerate stable), and thanks to the aging specs of Stadia’s servers, this type of performance hasn’t gotten any better since the platform launched.
And I’m talking about local performance here, how the game performs on the server before you see it as a stream, which is made clear when recording these games since that function is performed server side. I mean, it’s not like Stadia is known for top-of-the-line performance, and Ubisoft certainly isn’t known for optimization, so when I see that Assassin’s Creed Mirage isn’t coming to Stadia, my mind jumps to the possibility Stadia simply can’t run the game well enough to make it worth Ubi’s effort to port the title. We’ll probably never know for sure if this is the reason, but I am suspicious.
What happens if the devs leave?
My takeaway from all of this is that, yes, from the outset, it looks incredibly bad that Ubisoft, of all companies, won’t be bringing the latest entry in an incredibly popular series to the platform, especially when Stadia basically launched public testing with an Assassin’s Creed game. The doom and gloom that can be gleaned from this info may be where the mind first goes, but perhaps it’s Google’s failure to upgrade its servers that is the real issue here.
Still, no matter how you slice it, Google isn’t doing a very good job with Stadia with its perceptible lack of AAA games, and is incredibly short of its 100-game goal for the year, and this kind of news only seems to get worse as time moves on. Today we won’t get Assassin’s Creed, but what happens when Ubisoft finally gives up the ghost? What happens when nobody wants to release games on the platform when the venture is a net loss? And most importantly, what will happen to our games when Google finally shuts the doors for good? All questions I don’t have answers to, and sadly neither does Google, which is why Stadia is increasingly growing into a dubious investment for any and all gamers. I know I regret all of my purchases on the platform.
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