Assassin's Creed 4 lead designer explains PC delays

Assassin's Creed 4: Black Flag is coming to PC on November 19 and lead designer Jean-Sebatien Decant explains why the PC versions seem to come later than their console brethren.

Ozzie Mejia

October 2, 2013 12:30 PM

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Ubisoft announced earlier this week that Assassin's Creed 4: Black Flag would set sail on PC on November 19. It's not the first time the series has featured a later PC release and it's almost come to be expected by now. AC4 lead designer Jean-Sebastien Decant explains the delays, saying it's a matter of perfecting the console version first.

"It all depends on what is the master version," Decant told Polygon. "If for instance, the [Xbox 360] version was the master version, or the PlayStation 3 version was the master version, then we'd need a little bit more time to adapt it for the PC. But we need to finish that other version first."

In the case of AC4, both the Xbox 360 and PS3 versions of the game are considered the master SKU. Once these iterations of the game are completed, the PC team takes some extra time to ensure their version is polished. Interestingly, in this year's case, the same principle will also apply to the next-gen console versions, as explained earlier this year. Decant added, "You need to finish one and make sure that it's clean before you can then finish the others."

Ozzie Mejia

Senior Editor

Ozzie has been playing video games since picking up his first NES controller at age 5. He has been into games ever since, only briefly stepping away during his college years. But he was pulled back in after spending years in QA circles for both THQ and Activision, mostly spending time helping to push forward the Guitar Hero series at its peak. Ozzie has become a big fan of platformers, puzzle games, shooters, and RPGs, just to name a few genres, but he’s also a huge sucker for anything with a good, compelling narrative behind it. Because what are video games if you can't enjoy a good story with a fresh Cherry Coke?