User blog comment:Master Sima Yi/Assassinews 08-02-'13 — Next game will be all new, plus DLC promotional material/@comment-121.127.204.31-20130210042201/@comment-4530924-20130210072014

nah mate, they mean that each studio work in games independently, so AC4 (or whatever comes next) and upcoming games will in dev for longer than the gap between their releases. Which kinda means that they do have an underlying plan, but then again according to Corey May, they did stick to the initial blueprints.