Steep combines Ubisoft’s risk-taking and open-world big-budget design

Ubisoft is taking a risk with one of its newest blockbuster console properties, and it can do that because it spent so many years making Assassin’s Creed games over and over.

Steep is the publisher’s open-world winter-sports sim that it announced at the Electronic Entertainment Expo trade show earlier this month. It is coming to PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and PC in December. It’s about snowboarding, skiing, parachuting, and jumping (in a wingsuit) down open-world snow-covered mountains. During a demo in Ubisoft’s booth, it struck me that while Steep doesn’t have guns, stealth, and explosions, it is still reminiscent of the company’s hits like Assassin’s Creed, Far Cry, and Watch Dogs. And what I took away is that Ubisoft has refined a development process after releasing a new Assassin’s Creed every year from 2009 to 2015 that is enabling it to branch out into new genres and settings with its biggest releases.