Ubisoft recently filed its fourth quarter and year end reports for fiscal 2013, reporting total sales of €1.26 billion for the year ($1.66 billion), an 18.4% increase on FY2012, and €175 million for the quarter ($230 million), an 8.7% year-on-year increase.

Far Cry 3 was one of the major movers and shakers behind this bounty, having shipped 6 million units, but The Settlers Online and Just Dance were also major performers, with Ubisoft highlighting the performance of free-to-play and casual games. The publisher noted that Assassin’s Creed and Just Dance had joined the ranks of the 20 best-selling franchies in the industry during the year.

It also revealed that the tepidly-received Assassin’s Creed III managed to ship 12.5 million units, including digital sales. During a post-release call to investors, Ubisoft said that it isn’t banking on Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag to do the same.

“In our numbers we expect less than last year,” CEO Yves Guillemot said.

“We are actually pushing to achieve more than last year because we think the pirate segment is a great segment that can generate a lot more on a worldwide basis than what was achieved last year. But we wanted to be prudent on our expectations so that it can probably be a bonus if it comes.”

Other reveals from the call include word of the shelving of Patrice Desiléts’s 1666.

Source: Ubisoft IR via Blue’s News

The second gameplay trailer for Assassin’s Creed 4: Black Flag takes us a little bit deeper into the life and past of Edward Kenway. It also has a bit where a dude gets eaten by a shark. Any trailer with sharks in gets the thumbs up from me! Now, apparently ol’ Eddie used to work for a King, presumably of England. But it sounds like he got fed up with that and went rogue, pillaging and plundering and generally doing whatever the hell he wants. Good on him, I guess.

We’re introduced to his crew in a vague and general way, but mostly there’s just lots of images of Kenway jumping off buildings directly into the spines of his enemies. Maybe you’ve seen this before – it’s called Assassin’s Creed: Any of the Other Ones. Anyway, it looks pretty and if it’s anything like the ship battles of what is colloquially known as Ass Creed 3, it should be a lot of fun.

Ass Creed 4 is due for release on October 31, and already has a metric butt-tonne of junk for preordering and/or special editions which you can find at your local retailer.

In case you haven’t been on the Internet in a while, here’s a hot tip: pirates are pretty cool. Assassin’s Creed 4 likes them too, and so much so that in fact the entire game is based around the adventures and origins of some of the most famous characters in the Golden Age of Piracy. If you’re after a bit of gameplay footage, stick around until the end — otherwise this is just an entertaining animatic designed to make you feel all tingly for these noble, noble pirates.

Ubisoft have released the first of what will undoubtedly be many gameplay videos for Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag, showing two minutes of Edward Kenway running, climing, swimming, stabbing and exploring his way across the ocean and the various tropical/mysterious ruin-covered islands that inhabit it.

You can check it out below, and if it’s your sort of thing then you can also check out places like EB Games where the Special, Skull and Buccaneer Editions of the game have already been announced and detailed just today (even though the game doesn’t launch until October). Enjoy!

EDIT: Thanks to everybody who pointed out this article title originally said ‘Blacklist’.

Animal rights organisation PETA has criticised Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag for what it calls a “disgraceful” attempt to “glorify” whaling.

In a statement issued to VentureBeat, PETA says: “Whaling –that is, shooting whales with harpoons and leaving them to struggle for an hour or more before they die or are hacked apart while they are still alive — may seem like something out of the history books, but this bloody industry still goes on today in the face of international condemnation, and it’s disgraceful for any game to glorify it.”

“PETA encourages video game companies to create games that celebrate animals—not games that promote hurting and killing them.”

Black Flag will also reportedly be composed of 40% naval missions, according to a quote from creative director Jean Guesdon on a document dug up by PC Gamer. Some of the side quests during these missions will apparently involve the hunting of whales — or not, if PETA is able to have any affect on the game (which seems unlikely).

A similar quote from Guesdon uncovered by AGB indicates that the game’s single-player experience will be a “connected” one, referring to it as “Single Connected Player” mode and saying that “Next Gen Consoles will allow players to have a solo experience that benefit the presence of a huge community”. It’s not clear whether this will demand an always-online connection, but it’s doubtful as Ubisoft have since sworn-off the practice.

With Assassin’s Creed games coming out with clockwork-like regularity, one might begin to question, really, whether there’s enough new material to justify each annual release. Well, Ubisoft have pointedly answered that question and are claiming that Black Flag isn’t just “Assassin’s Creed 3.5″, thankyou very much.

“The whole feeling of the game is completely fresh and new. It will feel very different to Assassin’s Creed 3,” said lead content manager Carsten Myhill to CVG. “I think it completely warrants the Assassin’s Creed 4 moniker, not only with the new name and setting, but the attitude and the tone of the experience.”

“We want to make it clear to fans, and those who haven’t played Assassin’s Creed before, that this is a pirate game. The ‘Black Flag’ is there, it says ‘hey, this is the HD, open-world action adventure pirate game you’ve been waiting for’.”

To be honest, it does sound like the sort of game that I could get behind. But will it lose sight of that glorious goal in an attempt to drag us back into the Assassin’s Creed universe? Time will tell.

Source: CVG

Late last week, it was rumoured very officially that the next Assassin’s Creed game would be called ‘Black Flag’ and feature pirates. Then, later, we discovered that many big sites already knew that it was true but weren’t able to tell anyone.

Then, later, this trailer came out. Now you can watch it! All CGI, all pirates, for your enjoyment. Take it away, the GON video player — or you can download this trailer in HD from our file library.

Black Flag is out October 31.

Fresh from taking a look at AC3′s first DLC, we’ve now learned that the next Assassin’s Creed game appears to have been revealed via a series of internet leaks.

Titled Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag, the story apparently follows Connor’s grandfather Edward Kenway, as he adventures around the Caribbean of 1715. A poster sent anonymously to Kotaku shows a pirate-themed Assassin kicking ass and taking names on the deck of a ship and, when flipped over, shows a map of the Caribbean with iconic locations such as Jamaica, Cuba, and the southern tip of Florida.

The game is widely expected to be themed around more naval battles, which is probably good as those themselves were widely agreed to be the best part of Assassin’s Creed III. More details as and when Ubisoft provide them.

Source: Kotaku and Kotaku