For their new game, Ubisoft constructed a game engine they called Snowdrop. It's supposed to help support its lobby-free multiplayer functions along with the open-world, dynamic weathers and so on. Now we could see it being used for some of Ubi's other IPs in the future.
Head of IP at Ubisoft Massive, Martin Hultberg, was interviewed and revealed that Snowdrop could be seen in other franchises in future.
"Internally we try to share as much technology as possible between the studios. It’s just more efficient that way. In our case we developed the Snowdrop Engine from the ground-up because we needed middleware that could run on the new consoles and PC, while doing everything we wanted to do with the open world, the weather, time of day and such features. Now we’ve made that engine available to other studios, and not just the Clancy teams. Any Ubisoft team can use Snowdrop now."
Also, the Division's 'Dark Zone' could see the functionality traveling across to other teams under Ubisoft's umbrella as well in future. "I think that feature could definitely be incorporated into other Ubisoft games like Assassin’s Creed. It’s a really immersive feature that I think fits with pretty much all Ubisoft’s IPs."
Ubisoft have recently announced their intention not to make a new Assassin's Creed game in 2016, so I wonder if a desire to build their next game in that series upon this game engine is a part of that? It'll be interesting to see if that theory holds water when the next one is announced.