Watch Dogs is being built on a brand new engine

Watch Dogs is being built on a brand new engine developed internally at Ubisoft, the game’s producer has revealed.

“We’re building a new IP,” producer Dominic Guay told VG247.

“For us, there’s three ingredients that are required to achieve that. That’s what we did with Splinter Cell in Montreal; that’s what we did with Assassin’s Creed.

“The first thing is you need a talented team. We got that. We need time. We’ve had that; we’ve been working on this for a good two years and we’re not shipping this year for sure. So we have a lot of time where we’re able to put a lot of details in the game.

“The third thing you need is awesome tech, a great engine. Because when you build a new IP you want to bring in new experiences. To create a new type of experience your designers need new tools, a new engine, and we did just that.

“We have a very strong engineering team,” Guay continued, “and we built the new engine to give the designers new abilities [and] new things that they could do.

“That’s how we could have so much detail and so much density in our Chicago. We’re going to be supporting multiple platforms when we come out.”

This year’s Assassin’s Creed, Assassin’s Creed III, is being built on a new version of Ubisoft’s existing Anvil engine, used in previous Assassin’s Creed titles.

But Guay’s choice of words suggests that Watch Dogs could be being developed on an entirely new engine altogether, adding credence to those next-gen rumours.

Could a next-gen Assassin’s Creed be in development on Watch Dogs’ engine, too?

Ubisoft has yet to announce a release date for Watch Dogs, but Guay says that the game will “not [be] shipping this year for sure.”