This is related to some recent news that Assassin’s Creed 3 was made possible by the annualization of the Ezio AC games. Says Alex Hutchinson, creative director for AC 3: “The core team on this one has been working at it for almost three years, which is something you can almost never get in the industry these days – it’s too expensive, too risky. So we need the other projects to support that kind of development – these big jumps.
That's cool to know. I had sort of begun to think that the AC series was becoming a stale cash grab, but if its framed as being able to support the next "big jump", then I don't feel so bad about buying every game in the series.