No Assassin's Creed III beta a 'hard decision' - Ubisoft

Ubisoft hosted multiplayer beta periods for Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood and Assassin's Creed: Revelations, but no such pre-release trial will be held for this October's Assassin's Creed III. Explaining the decision to XboxGameZone, Ubisoft Annecy multiplayer game director Damien Kieken said that while betas can be helpful, they also take up time that he said would be better spent adding more elements to the game.

"To be honest, it’s something we want to do every year because we get community feedback that helps us tune the game. It is also a good reward for the community that has followed us from the beginning. But doing a beta takes a lot of time," Kieken said. "We’d need to polish a version, submit it to the platform holders and support it when it’s out. And all the time put into the beta doesn’t go into the final game. Because we wanted to push so many things into the game, we took the hard decision to favor the final game content instead of doing a beta and we believe it will be favorable in the end."

Set during the American Revolution, Assassin's Creed III features a new protagonist with a mixed Native American-English heritage. Named Ratohnhake:ton but going by Connor, the hero of Assassin's Creed III will inject himself into the ongoing struggle between the Templars and the Assassins. The game is being built by Ubisoft Montreal and six collaborating studios on a new engine called Ubisoft-AnvilNext.

Assassin's Creed III will arrive for the Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, and PC on October 30. A Wii U version is also in development, though its release date remains unknown. For more on Assassin's Creed III, check out GameSpot's latest preview.