One could be forgiven for worrying about annualised releases affecting the quality of franchise. And then, surely, there's saturation to think about, too.
But Ubisoft are perfectly happy with their annualised setup for Assassin's Creed, mainly because more players are getting involved than ever before, apparently.
"No," Ubisoft's Yannis Mallat told Eurogamer after being asked if annualisation might lead to fans growing tired of the series. "The players will tell us. Right now there are more and more coming into the franchise, so I don't see that day.
"It's our breakthrough. When you have quality content, the frequency of coming out with the game is not an issue at all.
"On the contrary, people expect more and more of that content. So it's natural to be able to provide that content. The gamers are happy and it's our job to make them happy."
"When we say we are annualising the franchise, we don't say the teams only have one year to work on a project," Mallat explained.
"Assassin's Creed is mature enough in terms of reaching the critical mass of players and community, but also in terms of envisioning enough content for years to come, and in terms of technology to sustain all that.
"And more importantly, it's mature enough in growing the talent and the core teams so we can have several core teams working on the next one and other projects on the brand.
"That's why every Assassin's Creed has one dedicated core team working more than one year on their projects. We call that a roadmap. It takes into account the creative content - the settings, the where and what - the technology and the team."
Of course, if you have teams constantly churning out similar content, there's surely a risk of burnout. Back in 2010, Ubisoft Montreal's Jean-Francois Boivin said the following in relation to Assassin's Creed: "You can't plough a field every year. Once every three years - or once every something - you have to let it breathe. You have to let the minerals back in. I think it's the same thing with any license, really."
Mallat suggests it's not like that.
"What I described with the roadmap is we have several teams. So they are resting. The team that has delivered Assassin's Creed 3, they're not working on Black Flag. They're resting. They are refreshing their minds and then working on something else that is not announced."
