ASSASSIN'S CREED
We all remember the controversy with UbiSoft Assassin’s Creed’s exclusivity. First it was shown off as an Xbox 360 title as Assassin at the X05 event and later confirmed only as a PlayStation 3 title. After, what was known as the worst kept secret in the biz, the Xbox 360 and PC versions were confirmed the question lingered; is there a difference between the console versions?


We had a chance to speak with Lead Engineer for Assassin’s Creed, Mathieu Mazerolle and asked the big question; how do the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 versions stack-up against each other?

Our goal is to ship the two versions of [Assassin's Creed] to be within 5% or less of difference between each other. That doesn’t mean the PS3 is 5% “better” or “worse”, it’s really just an approximation and a statement that while the two versions are very similar, there will be (as there always is) small, hopefully inperceptible, differences between the two versions within a very small threshold.

Later adding:

Both machines are very complex and have very distinct strengths and weaknesses, so it’s almost impossible to quantify these sorts of comparisons - we just want to make the game as good as it can be on both platforms, and owners of both consoles will get the same experience from playing [Assassin's Creed].

At X07 when asked about the benefit of Blu-Ray versus standard DVD Mathieu told us that even if UbiSoft wanted to add a new piece of content to the Xbox 360 version of Assassin’s Creed the DVD version is already at capacity.

When we emailed him for clarification he reassured Xbox 360 fans, saying:

As far as adding extra content, it’s not really an issue: we have all the content we need for the game fitting on a DVD as it is, and the game wouldn’t necessarily be better by just by adding “stuff” on the disk: the biggest limitation for us isn’t disk space, it’s squeezing every last drop of performance out of the processors on both consoles to make the game as cool as possible on the screen!

Keeping all of this in mind lets face it, Assassin’s Creed is coming from one of the most trusted development teams in the world, UbiSoft Montreal. E3′07 wasn’t an especially incredible public showing for the game, but from what we’ve seen; its unique and compelling enough for us to anticipate its November arrival.