Rumor: Next Assassin’s Creed skips 2016 and gets Egyptian setting

Kotaku has a bit of a streak going when it comes to revealing details on Assassin’s Creed games before Ubisoft even announces them.

The site previously leaked information for 2014’s Assassin’s Creed: Unity and Assassin’s Creed: Rogue and 2015’s Assassin’s Creed: Syndicate. Now, Kotaku says the next entry in the stealth-action series is set in Egypt. More notably, it says that the game, code-named Empire, won’t come out this year. That would mark the first time since 2008 (before the release of Assassin’s Creed II) that Assassin’s Creed didn’t have a yearly release.

We don’t normally post rumors on GamesBeat, but Kotaku’s track record with Assassin’s Creed is strong. Still, if Empire does exist and isn’t coming out this year, we likely won’t hear anything official about it for some time.

2014’s Assassin’s Creed: Unity faced a lot of criticism from fans for its buggy launch. 2015’s Syndicate fared better, but Ubisoft might fear that the strain of yearly releases is finally beginning to negatively impact the series. It puts developers under a lot of pressure to quickly turn out quality products (and it’s especially difficult for complex open-word games like Assassin’s Creed) and runs the risk of fatiguing fans.