Ubisoft to introduce Uplay Passport for Assassin’s Creed and Ghost Recon online multiplayer – Rumour
It seems that one particular nightmare for gamers is quickly becoming a reality as yet another Publisher seems to be working towards adding an online pass system to their games.
Ubisoft, the developer and publisher behind franchises such as Rainbow Six, Splinter Cell, Assassin’s Creed, Rabbids and Ghost Recon, seems to be the next in line to jump on the online-pass bandwagon.
Dubbed the Uplay Passport –one can already see the true motive behind the move if the reader was to remove the ‘l’ from the first word– by various sources, it seems that Ubisoft look set to launch the system with their latest foray into the Driver
franchise.
Driver: San Francisco is not just the first driver game developed for the current batch of next generation consoles, namely the Xbox 360 and Sony PlayStation, but could very well be the first Ubisoft game to have the Uplay Passport feature as well.
For those unfamiliar with how the ‘online pass’ system works, Bettor.com has you covered. Basically the online pass is a code that comes with the game itself. The code ‘unlocks’ or enables the player to access the online multiplayer features of the game
after it is entered in either the player’s Xbox Live account or their PlayStation Network account.
This basically restricts the use of online multiplayer to one account only. While this may not be an issue for those who purchase new copies of the games, it does add an extra burden on gamers who are purchasing used copies of the game.
The added burden comes from having to part with a little extra cash when purchasing a used game, as the previous code only unlocks online features for one account. Gamers who want a new code will have to purchase it from either the PlayStation Store or Xbox
Live Marketplace for a fee.
Other publishers have already introduced the system with Electronic Arts the most notable. With huge titles like FIFA 11 and Battlefield: Bad Company 2 already using the feature and many more to follow in the future, along with Sony set to introduce its
own pass system (click http://www.senore.com/Sony-introducing-the-PlayStation-Pass,-Starting-with-Resistance-3-a81197 for details), it seems as if it is a growing trend in the industry.
Alexandre Breault, Assassin’s Creed: Revelations’ lead game designer did lighten the sense of dread gamers were feeling by insisting that he was “not aware” of whether or not Revelations would have the feature implemented.
However, the Uplay Passport does look likely as Alan Martinez, Ubisoft’s Chief Financial Officer previously stated that Ubisoft were considering a move in that direction when he said, “looking very carefully at what EA is doing regarding 'the $10 solution,'
and will probably follow that line sometime in the future.”
It seems the future may begin with Driver: San Francisco when the game releases in a couple of weeks time.
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