Ubisoft won't release an Assassin's Creed game this year, for the first time since 2009, it said on Thursday.

"We are now in a position to take the decision not to release a new Assassin's Creed game in 2016-17, in order to give the brand a new dimension, while still presenting very solid targets for the fiscal year," said Ubisoft CEO Yves Guillemot in an emailed statement. ("2016-17" here refers to the fiscal year ending March 2017, not the entire calendar year 2017.)

Last year's game Assassin's Creed Syndicate, while a strong entry for the franchise, had a "slower than expected launch" according to Ubisoft, which did not report sales numbers for its games in its financial results. Ubisoft said that the launches of new entries in the South Park and Watch_Dogs series, among others, still promised a strong fiscal year even without its flagship action series.

My feeling on the series, after finishing Syndicate, was that Ubisoft should start Assassin's Creed over from scratch. The many years' worth of narrative baggage, and new engines built on top of old engines, were not doing the series any favors. The time-traveling games often played like you were time-traveling back to 2009. It may not be willing to start again from zero, but putting the brakes on the annualized releases and crafting something more polished could revitalize a series that's squandered a lot of its potential over the years.