Assassin’s Creed franchise boss Marc-Alexis Côté departed from Ubisoft after a career spanning 20 years with the company. This news comes two weeks after Vantage Studios, a separate business entity that was formed when Tencent acquired a 25% stake in Ubisoft, was announced to be overseeing franchises like Assassin’s Creed, along with other Ubisoft Far Cry, and Rainbow Six
Staff at Ubisoft were informed of His departure via an internal email, which outlined Vantage Studios’ need for alignment with core values at Ubisoft, along with wishing Côté well in future endeavors. According to people close to the departure, Côté was offered a position among the leadership of Vantage Studios but ultimately chose to decline this offer. According to another internal memo from Vantage Studios co-CEO Christophe Derennes and acquired by IGN, suggested that he was disappointed by this decision as he “had his own expectations and priorities related to Vantage Studios’ creation and future.”
Marc-Alexis Côté was known by his colleagues at Ubisoft as “Mac”, using his three initials. He joined the company in 2005 as a software engineer, before getting the higher title of lead engine programmer on Prince of Persia: The Forgotten Sands. He joined the Assassin’s Creed team with Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood, as lead level designer, before he worked on 3 as the game director. As creative director, he would lead development on several projects at Ubisoft Quebec, including titles in the series such as Black Flag, Syndicate, and Odyssey.
During the development of the most recent entry in the series, Assassin’s Creed: Shadows, Ubisoft looked to create a more streamlined story focus via the Animus Hub, at the time referred to as Assassin’s Creed Infinity, Côté was given control of the entire franchise to lay out a slate of upcoming projects, including Codename Hexe, set around the witch trials in the Holy Roman Empire, which has been announced but lacks a release date. Côté, at the time, stated the project would be entirely different from that of Shadows, which followed in the series transition to open-world action RPG.
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