‘Watch Dogs’ May Be The Beginning Of New Franchise
Watch Dogs may be just the beginning of a new Ubisoft franchise.
We all know that Assassin’s Creed has been Ubisoft’s killer IP for several years now, giving us the ancestral “memories” of bartender Desmond Miles. And with Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag continuing the saga on the current systems as well as Xbox One and PlayStation 4, it shows no signs of stopping.
What we didn’t know was that Ubisoft‘s new game Watch Dogs may be the beginning of another franchise. Aiden Pearce, expert hacker and combatant, might be hacking and fighting his way through more than Chicago in the future. In fact, we might even see Aiden Pearce and a descendant of Desmond Miles meet in the long run for an epic crossover. Of course, that’s just speculation.
Ubisoft’s senior vice president of sales and marketing, Tony Key, says of Watch Dogs becoming a franchise:
“That’s what all our games are about; we won’t even start if we don’t think we can build a franchise out of it. There’s no more fire and forget – it’s too expensive. We feel like we’re in a really good place with Watch Dogs, but until we’re the biggest game of the year we’re not going to be satisfied. Last year we cleaned up at E3 because we were pretty much the only next-gen game around. Watch Dogs for us is really a franchise because we’re tapping into something people really care about, never more than when the NSA PRISM scandal broke.”
Tony Key adds about the similarities between Watch Dogs and the NSA scandal:
“We had a screen shot of this guy sitting in his apartment with a department store female mannequin sitting with him and he’s talking to it. When the PRISM story broke on Wednesday, we had that screen shot out on Friday on social media and said ‘You never know who’s watching.’ We were able to react very quickly, and that’s what social media brings.”
Watch Dogs could become Ubisoft’s next big series, and with the recently public knowledge of the NSA spying tactics, it has already begun to show a degree of success in marketing.
What do you think of Watch Dogs becoming a franchise?