Upcoming Assassin's Creed Game Delayed Due To Children's Party Game

has reportedly been delayed into 2025. The China-based mobile spin-off was announced as part of the Ubisoft Forward showcase in 2022 but has apparently been in development for at least four years. After its closed beta tests in 2023, many thought it was on track for a 2024 launch.

As reported by Reuters, this new delay is due to a strategic shift of resources by Tencent, the world’s largest video games company, who had been working with Ubisoft on. Tencent has reportedly redeployed hundreds of people from the team onto its new party game, .

Tencent launched, a game in which players race through obstacle courses as cartoon characters, in December 2023. Many saw the release of this title as a way to counter its domestic rival NetEase's success with the massively popular, which was the most downloaded game app in China at one point in 2023, and according to Reuters, boosted the company's shares by over 40% that year.

Ultimately, this decision shows that Tencent has decided that an easy-to-play game with cute characters tackling obstacle courses like — which also utilizes other Tencent products such as the social network app WeChat to allow players to communicate with each other in-game — has taken precedence over developing a title within a big-budget, sophisticated foreign franchise like for smartphones. Currently, hasn't been released outside of China.

's delay will undoubtedly disappoint both Ubisoft and the many fans who were waiting for a different kind of experience in 2024. Fortunately, players won't have to wait long to return to the mainline series, as Ubisoft has confirmed that, which is finally taking the franchise to Feudal Japan after years of fan demand and teases throughout the franchise, is due to release some time in the 2025 fiscal year (which runs between April 2024 and March 2025) and a LinkedIn post from a member of Ubisoft's Business Development and Brand Partnership team called the game "."

Sources: Reuters (1, 2)