Ubisoft CEO Yves Guillemot "forced" Ubisoft Montreal to reveal Watch Dogs at E3 2012, despite the studio initially believing that it was too early to show off the game.

"They forced us to go at E3 2012," said creative director Jonathan Morin speaking in the latest issue of EDGE. "We didn't know what the hell those new consoles would be, so Watch Dogs really has worked on [seventh]-gen systems since the start. But we always pushed the ideas, the design, the core of Watch Dogs in such a way that we felt it would fit well with what we thought would be the future of games.

"Yves was the one who wanted us to go at that E3, even though we felt it was a bit early, and in the end I think he was right."

Watch Dogs had initially been scheduled to launch alongside next-gen consoles in November 2013, but saw a last minute delay pushing it into 2014. The game is finally due to launch almost two years after its initial reveal on May 27.

However, the game may launch to scrutiny from some gamers who have accused Watch Dogs' visuals of being "downgraded" since its initial reveal – something the publisher refutes.

http://www.videogamer.com/ps4/watch_...atch_dogs.html

I think they should have waited to announce the game. Watch Dogs could have taken the gaming industry by storm if they had kept the announcement close to the launch of the game, as it is, people seem to have forgotten about it a little and the only reason I believe it will still sell well is because of the drought in games around May. I know for a fact that I am now on the fence about the game and probably won't pick it up at launch.

I find it a little hard to believe they didn't know about the next gen consoles back in 2012.

So, that means they thought that the new consoles will be much more powerful and only because of that they accidentally showed something much better as possible?

Not sure if I should laugh because I'm not sure if I can believe him or if I should cry because the game looked so great in 2012.

they wouldn't be clueless but there would still be a lot of unknown details.  it's been pretty much accepted that sony surprised everyone (GG games included) when they announced 8Gb of ram. 

Well, that would only mean that they expected at least for this part weaker hardware as they really got which makes his statement even worse.

Its a cross gen title, not knowing exact nxt gen details is irrelevant.

It is actually. People act here like porting a game is a piece a cake...it isn't. As a programmer I can tell you that.

Even if the consoles are more powerful, there are many things developers have to take in mind, new bugs that might appear when porting the game, changing textures which for such a big game requires a lot of time (they of course can leave them the same as the PS360/Wii U version, but of course people will not want that), performance issues (yes they can happen, because the architecture of 7th and 8th gen consoles are different), sound glitches, and many many more.

This is not a 2D platformer, or a small game at all, it's a full sandbox game with a huge city, if they want to improve graphics, it requires a lot of time and planning. Plus take in mind QA which takes A LOT of time in such a big project like this.

However, the above depends heavily on how far in development the game was when they started the PS4 and One versions. If the game was pretty short in devlopment then there's little to no excuse, but considering the time the game has been in development (most likely 4 or maybe 5 years now) then the above still stands.

People really need to stop complaining about cross-gen or early-gen games. Developers started working on these titles with incomplete tools and without full details on the final hardware. Software development kits will have changed a LOT. The transition phase is always difficult.