TP Vision, the company behind the Philips TV brand in Europe, today revealed that its Ambilight TVs have been named by Ubisoft as the Official Immersive TV Partner for the Assassin’s Creed video game franchise.
The collaboration, which will run until the end of next year, is unlikely to result in any concrete developments for Assassin’s Creed fans. Instead, it’s really more of an effort by Ubisoft and Philips to show how premium displays and ambient lighting can combine to enhance the immersive nature of the game, its dramatic storylines and its sprawling historical worlds.
The companies are basically trying to entice gamers to not only buy the game, but also pair it with a high-end TV, so they can get more value out of the latest version of Assassin’s Creed. After all, Ubisoft has spent years developing the game, painstakingly designing its dramatic visuals and historically accurate ancient world. Through a series of collaborative projects, Philips will try to position its new Ambilight TVs, including the Philips OLED951 and OLED911 and the Philips MLED918, which is the company’s first that features a new RGB LED display, as the ultimate conduit for experiencing Assassin’s Creed. The pitch is that the TV should be more of a participant in the gaming experience, and not just a passive screen.
This is where Philips’ novel Ambilight technology comes in. Ambilight utilises intelligent LEDs mounted on the rear of the television to project on-screen colours onto the surrounding walls in real-time. For Assassin’s Creed players, it promises to have a transformative impact on the gameplay experience. When their character is busy scaling a tower to try and get a feel for where they are in the context of the map, they’ll see the vibrant hues of a digital sunrise spill out beyond the display’s bezels and onto the living room wall behind the TV. It should have a profound effect on the immersion felt by the player, making the display seem much larger, effectively sucking them into the Assassin’s Creed universe.
Philips also took the opportunity to emphasise the importance of having a high-end display. Modern games require low latency, ultra smooth motion and flawless colour accuracy to render the creator’s intent accurately on screen, and that’s exactly where Philips excels. For instance, its upcoming OLED TVs boast almost instantaneous pixel-response times thanks to their 165Hz refresh rates, while their high contrast should ensure they can make out all of the details in the darkest scenes. Meanwhile, the MLED981 RGB Mini LED TV promises to deliver incredible peak brightness and rich, vibrant colour accuracy, with blistering speeds of up to 330Hz.
Philips’ high-end OLED and RGB LED TVs are powered by the P5 AI Picture Engine, which acts as an intelligent display layer, optimising source quality, HDR balance, and texture detail in real-time, all while respecting the creators' original intent. They also boast features such as Nvidia G-SYNC and Game Bar 2.0, which help to provide gamers with the speed, clarity and control needed to show off their parkour-like skills and come out on top in brutal hand-to-hand combat.
