I should also probably point out that Ubisoft is going through this cycle of longer dev times to hopefully make a few stupid awesome games because Vivendi has been breathing down their necks for the past year and a half in an attempt to snatch the company away from the Guillemont family who founded and run most of the important strategic managerial positions.
What we're witnessing is a fight between Vivendi which founded by Napoleon III and has the largest shareholder of the Bollare family (meaning they're behind the takeover bid) versus Ubisoft and the Guillemonts.
It's an actual fucking dynastic struggle between French Aristocrat families on the stock market.
So, why the delay to 2018? To be honest, this play is fucking genius.
They plan to drop Far Cry 5 at the back end of February and then the new Assassin's Creed the month after all neatly in time to ram their stock prices way, way up for the close of the financial year.
Its both a survival strategy and a hail mary play all rolled into one. We've seen from the trailer that, actually the in-game looks relatively polished now and could have easily been kicked out the door by Q3 else Q4 of this year with a few bugs and nobody would've really cared.
They're holding off on that to shine this fucker like a diamond and then ditch it right at the time Vivendi would be casting around for more people looking to lighten their stocks around the new financial year.
They're not doing that, and the similar silence has been had over the next Assassin's Creed, indeed all we know is it's probably Eygpt, and will either be the 11th century, or we'll be Amnut or one of her colleagues.
Meaning again, shine like a diamond.
Oh, and for those of you wondering, yes, Vivendi did sue Google that's created the hideous mess of the copyright bots and all the other dodgy shit while mysteriously leaving the (French run and owned) Daily Motion alone to post copyrighted material unmolested.
Which they own.
Funny ole world, ain't it?