Assassin's Creed Infinity is now The Animus Hub, a launcher for modern Assassin's Creed games that Ubisoft definitely doesn't want you to call a launcher

The Animus Hub from Assassin's Creed Shadows highlighting the game's Memories for Naoe and Yasuke

(Image credit: Ubisoft)

With Assassin's Creed Shadows imminent, Ubisoft has lifted the veil on The Animus Hub, the project once known as Assassin's Creed Infinity, which it definitely doesn't want you to say is a new Assassin's Creed launcher.

In a presentation ahead of today's big Assassin's Creed Shadows preview, Andrée-Anne Boisvert, a long-standing producer on the Assassin's Creed series, introduced The Animus Hub by saying "we're building a new home for Assassin's Creed moving forward, a place that will allow us to see our beloved franchise through an entirely new lens."

Boisvert explains that The Animus Hub is the project that you may have heard of under the name Assassin's Creed Infinity, which was first hinted at and then confirmed by Ubisoft in 2021. At the time, the project was thought to be a live-service entry in the series, and it wasn't until June 2024 that Ubisoft confirmed the new name and hinted that it might serve as a launcher for Assassin's Creed Shadows.

It's clear that Ubisoft doesn't want The Animus Hub to be thought of as just another launcher, however. Boisvert explains that "my nightmare was to suffer from another level of what we call 'launcher-ception'" - presumably the idea that you'd boot Assassin's Creed Shadows through a platform like Steam, only to then have to actually launch the game with another button press once the Hub had opened. She claims that "the Animus Hub is not a standalone launcher." Instead, "it's directly embedded within the Shadows executable," and should feel like a "seamless experience" because "if we couldn't get you directly into your game fast, then we consider it a failure."

Those specific games will be games from 'period 2' of the Assassin's Creed franchise - Origins, Odyssey, Valhalla, Mirage, and Shadows - and beyond. Boisvert explains that "we will also be integrating the Animus Hub in its constantly evolving form into all of our future titles," namedropping Assassin's Creed Hexe and multiplayer project Assassin's Creed Invictus, as well as "new additions and new titles that haven't been announced yet."

As for what the Hub actually does, Boisvert offers a helpful rundown of its four key features; 'Memories' will allow you to launch your games; 'Projects' are missions that appear throughout the world in Shadows, which you can complete to earn new rewards; those rewards include keys that can be redeemed in The Exchange for new gear; and finally, The Vault allows you to unlock more of the evolving modern-day Assassin's Creed storyline.

The Animus Hub will be available on all platforms, and while Ubisoft doubled-down on the idea that it "is not a standalone launcher" in a follow-up statement from an unnamed spokesperson, that's basically what this is. There are a few extra bells and whistles attached, so I suppose that you might instead deem The Animus Hub similar to Blizzard's Battle.Net, the League of Legends client, or Call of Duty's HQ - all of those allow you to boot up the games themselves, but are also home to stores, reward systems, blogs, various lore drops, and whatever else players and devs might want to include. The Animus Hub isn't just a launcher, but despite what Ubisoft says, it is still a launcher, just with a few extra bits included.