Skull and Bones Delayed Yet Again as Ubisoft Cancels Three Games

It looked really shallow. Doubt it would have sell at all.

This is what happens when a publisher is run by a family of clowns.

I feel so bad for the ordinary devs, it must be beyond frustrating at this point.

Make better games then, when previous Just Dance games were still selling best on the long dead Wii that should have been a clue. I mean this Mega-Brands thing is just nonsense, was Elden Ring a mega-brand? Sonic is very famous but its hard to argue in game selling terms that he's been big for a long time. Then you have stuff like the Avengers which is a huge brand but flopped because it was garbage.

How about Ubisoft stop making all their big franchises mediocre open worlds with shared mechanics between them for a start and have some imagination in what you do next. Brands aren't the problem, the games are

I think we are all going to be skull and bones by the time this releases 😉

I think Ubisoft will be acquired this year. Curious to see who buys them.

Aaaa h Ubisoft and its ever changing ways of doing games... like we still have an ounce of trust towards you :
https://www.pcgamer.com/ubisoft-is-making-changes-to-ensure-its-games-feel-more-distinct/

https://www.videogameschronicle.com/news/ubisoft-says-its-changing-strategy-to-focus-on-more-high-end-free-to-play-games/

https://cryptobriefing.com/ubisoft-invests-in-crypto-startup-has-play-to-earn-plans/

The last Ubisoft game I enjoyed was Immortals : Fenix Rising, and even this wasn't that incredible, just fun.

@Americansamurai1 Tencent. I'd bet money on that.

They need to just cancel Skull & Bones, it really is a terrible game. Not fun at all from what i’ve played.

@carlos82 'How about Ubisoft stop making all their big franchises mediocre open worlds' ummm actually those are the games that make them money and 'creative' and 'fun' Mario XCOM Rabbit games lose them money.

Don't even dare to point the finger at AC because Sony is doing a lot of the same stuff.

@RBMango I think your right, I think Microsoft would have purchased them, but their busy with Activision. I don't think Sony would purchase them since they are working on over 10 GAaS titles of their own. I mean maybe EA, but I doubt it. I mean if Amazon is serious about their gaming division it might be a smart purchase.

Wow, this Skull & Bones game. After all the time and resources poured into it, I figure they have to sell a gazillion copies just to break even. …Or just slice it up into a bunch of microtransactions and sell it piecemeal that way. Yup. That’s what they’ll do.

Sad to see that they feel “the industry continues to shift towards mega-brands and long-lasting titles”

I never played Black Flag, but the boat portions of Origins and Odyssey were the worst parts of those titles imo. I never understood why they thought people would want a pirate game where they never get to leave the ship and be a pirate.

Pirate ARPG or action adventure game with ship elements? Sign me up. Ship simulator? No gotdamm way.

@Bamila are you saying it would have run aground and barely set sail?

@InternetUser yet they themselves have announced future AC games moving away from that formula 🤔

I can't say I'm surprised about Mario Rabbids, launching within striking distance of Pokemon was never going to do it any favours. Whilst it's not typically a game I'd expect Nintendo fans to buy in big numbers despite the original having modest success

Such a shame, was one of my anticipated titles when they first revealed it

Ubisoft games don't appeal to me anymore. It's either another AC game or some monetised shooter with Tom Clancy in the name

insert Tidus from FF X laugh GIF here*

All the reviews for sparks of hope were pretty positive, surprised it performed poorly. AC games should completely be my jam, love historical settings and action 3rd person rpgs. They are so soulless though and broken. After 20 hrs of odyssey, I had completely had my fill yet 100s of hours of witcher 3 and elden ring I couldn't get enough. I hope mirage is different, tightly written with immersive stealth in a historical setting but I can't see it. Next to be embraced at this stage, their output would fit with the rest of that B game portfolio.

@carlos82 The new AC game will follow the same formula as Unity and Syndicate. There hasn't been a game worth copying since the Witcher 3 so don't expect anything truly new from Ubisoft or Guerilla.

Shocker.

Been in development for 5 years now at least, oof.

I just dont understand why they thought the ship combat from ac blackface would be a good idea for a full fledged game in the firdt place.

All I want is a true pirate game, not the ship battles and the fact the trailers made it look such a bore fest. Just cancel the game. Or leave it and add it to another game with pirates.

Not surprised, when was the last time ubisoft released a good game? Exactly.

@InternetUser there’s the Avatar game (Frontiers of Pandora) that looks promising. I’m picturing Far Cry gameplay in the rich world of Avatar. Hope we get more news soon and maybe confirmation of a late 2023 release 🤞

i would say that they should venture out to multiplayer but .. roller champions 🤮 and , anyone remember hyperscape ?

damn ubisoft is trash .

Square Enix and Ubisoft in the mud.

@InternetUser because all they can do is reskin a tried and true formula 😂 it’s just the only decent thing they have

Mega brands? Hollow knight, Sifu, Celeste, Elden Ring, RDR2, ... etc. All of them are games which sold extremely well and came out of almost no where compared to long-running franchises.
Ubisoft has to stop with the ***** arguments and just start making good games, horrible management and the devs are the ones left to bite the dust. I'm happy actually this's happening, I grew up playing Splinter Cell, prince of persia and the original AC and they were amazing games, and about a decade ago a disease has gotten into this company and they started to make the same games over and over again looking only for profit in the stupidest way possible. They need to refocus their efforts and build new IPs with fun gameplay and good stories and stop releasing the same games 10 times over.

I really, really hope one of those cancelled unannounced games wasn't a Driver game. Though to be honest, seeing as young kids and teens seem to just want to play online with their mates(and that's no bad thing), and older gamers seem to want deep RPG's or the mega budget AAA games, I don't think a Driver would do well.

All that being said, I really want a new Driver game.

The other two games? I reckon Rayman was one of them.

@InternetUser oh don't worry I'm not, I had the same issue with HFW and open world games in general have stagnated for years

Ubisoft getting eaten alive by the game industry they tried to push for. They used to make some really cool games and then went all in on "live service" shared world crap, all of the games become eerily similar and just plain boring with zero creative heart. Sad.

Ubi has lost their way used to be good now to interested in their online shop I saw this in assassins creed really different compared to the first 3 they wanted to make great games back then I played those games over months still do today I just ignore the ending of the 3rd game they dropped the ball the story of Desmond and the apple was amazing. Now its a reskin and repeat.

After Valhalla I’m done with Ubisoft. Watch Dogs Legions was *****. Valhalla was good but so much fluff and filler I gave up after I finished the main quest. Riders Republic was a good try, I’d like to see more creativity like that. Mario Vs…it’s was sale for half price constantly after three weeks at launch.

I dunno, they need some major revamping. It’s not the industry, it’s Ubisoft

"major challenges as the industry continues to shift towards mega-brands and long-lasting titles""

But....isn't Ubisoft the holder of several of those mega-brands, creator of multiple of those long-lasting titles, and one of the companies that pushed the industry in that direction to begin with??

Seems like a weird excuse for the owner of Assassin's Creed and Far Cry, including the 200 hour long AC Valhalla to be complaining that "mega brands and long lasting games are ruining gaming." Is it really better to blame their own products rather than just say "we've been making some really crummy games and didn't listen to the feedback that told us they looked like crummy games for years now..."

I don't know what to tell them about Sparks of Hope though. If Mario can't sell enough copies of your game, there's something else going on.

That's too bad Sparks of Hope failed to meet sales expectations, but I don't feel like the game got a lot of buzz. All the critics said it was better than the first and the first was pretty awesome IMO. I haven't gotten around to it but I was planning on buying it down the road.

@JSnow2 There's also the problem that Sony kind of aped their whole bread and butter format, improved on it, and out-marketed them with it leaving them with no identity. inFamous, Horizon, Tsushima, even Spiderman pretty blatantly clone the Ubisoft format which was itself an improved clone of the GTA format. AC is still mega-popular, but the Sony games definitely stole the limelight for that format of game since its early days.

@themightyant As much as this fiasco is keeping them in active development, and so in a job, if the game doesn’t end up shipping then their portfolio will be badly affected and could hinder their chances of getting other jobs anyway.

Business is hard and the landscape can change quickly. The only way to achieve continued longevity is to balance innovation with a true understanding of what makes video games such a compelling medium to players.

Should have canned this years ago. Some many dead franchises they could work with and create new experiences. Such a shame, I used to really rate this dev. The old Ghost games were incredible.

@themightyant That’s true, Singapore has been looking like an emerging market in many respects and I do wonder if these Western devs treating them like a satellite studio could put a lot of talented devs off.

Ubisoft crap formula of most of there titles catching up to them

@RBMango Or freakin Embracer Group who I'm becoming equally suspicious of 😅

@edgar14 couldn’t have said it better. The watch dogs legion and 2, far crys, most recent AC’s are just all the same with tired formula checklist open world with icons yuck. With low quality to boot. Ubi-stink

@Olmaz lol immortals was decent. Far cry = lame, AC = lame , watch dogs = lame, the crew = lame, for honor = lame, skull & bones = probably going to be lame.

@NEStalgia Sparks of Hope underperforming is very likely a result of their infamous price drop soon after launch strategy. If you know it's going to be around 50% off a month or so after launch (which did happen, 40% off in December), it's a good idea to wait until the sale if you have interest in it.

Literally just finished reading a bit older article about the development history. It is no surprise they still haven’t released it yet. A very interesting reading if anyone is interested:

https://kotaku.com/first-it-was-an-assassins-creed-expansion-now-its-ubis-1847326742

@Grumblevolcano Does that count as under-performing, though, if that's part of their strategy? I would assume no. Performance is based on expectations, and expectations should be based on their significant experience with that strategy. Bad as Ubi is, they've never been Square in terms of unrealistic expectations. "Underperform" I'm assuming means unit sales more than revenue. Could be a bad assumption, but I'm guessing it just did not sell as many copies as expected. And apparently neither did Just Dance which........I can't believe that actually still sold enough copies for years it's such a stale series.

This is what happens when you oversaturate the market with live service games. This is what Sony is looking at in a few years after they flood the market with there 10 live service games.

@NEStalgia They likely overestimated how many copies would be sold before the big discount due to thinking the Mario branding was enough on its own for people not to wait.

Ouch. Sounds like rough times over at Ubisoft. They really need Mirage ASAP and be sure it's a great game. Skull & Bones...I don't know guys I think it's simply a lost cause. It reminds me of Sony's unyielding devotion to Dreams even though I think it's safe to say by now it simply never took off. Skull & Bones is in pretty much the exact same situation at this point.

Sad to see Mario+Rabbids 2 fail too. I want to get to it but just haven't had the time yet.

@Grumblevolcano Maybe. Though the whole thing seems like "finding a reason" to show why their numbers are down rather than anything pointing to specific failures. They pretty much said everything they released underperformed. And I don't know that the public is really in on the "wait for Ubisoft sales" thing. And the ubisoft sales are meant to boost sales volume.

I'm also curious how much the economy plays a role here, have any other devs really been "up" in sales with Q4 releases? Other than Gow because it's Gow.

My rough translation is more like they stupidly assumed the good times of 2020 would keep on rolling and their budgeting did not allow for running into the brick wall of a recession.

@Korgon Dreams is going to happen! I'm sure of it! MM should definitely not work on new compelling content and should just keep adding into the game that doesn't move at $10 regularly on sales!

I still want to know what "failure" looks like for Mario + Rabbids2 . Just because they say it underperformed doesn't mean the numbers actually look underperforming. Think Tomb Raider 2013 for Square.

Literally just give up on it. Hell, even live service games like Fallout 76 look more exciting than Skulls and Bones. If all you really gonna do in that game is just ship battles and nothing else, then I don't expect the game to maintain the players' attention for a long time.

Such a shame. Shouldn't have been trying to make it too much like Assassin's Creed. This game was only going to be exciting after Black Flag. But since then we've had too many AC with ships so it became tiring. If they want this game to be successful then it should be something entirely it's own thing with freedom like Sea of Thieves. Need to get rid of the AC formula and just leave that for AC

@NEStalgia
That is a good point. I would like to see official numbers for Mario+Rabbids. That Tomb Raider situation still baffles me.😄

Ubisoft: We've delayed Skull & Bones slightly to polish the look of the water...noone will have better looking water than Skull & Bones!!😋😂

Also Ubisoft Exec 1: Why aren't people buying our samey live service games...are we out of touch?
Executive 2: Just Dance & Mario+Rabbids had single player modes,didn't they? Why waste $$ on that? We'll tell 'em they can make their own stories up online,especially when there's not much else to do in those open world fetch quests!🙄😂

Heaven forbid for the days when they made games like the Splinter Cell series,or Beyond Good & Evil,or Rayman etc.,that actually focused on a good story or were fun to play,rather than online grindfests!🙄

@Korgon I've tried playing dreams again recently, and was really surprised by the high quality of the user content on there. I wouldn't be surprised if Sony have found a few promising potential game designers through that.

@Korgon I'm pretty sure square was obsessed with the western sales of cod at the time and assumed tr was Western enough to sell the same numbers and budgeted with the assumption it would. And then it didn't because of course it didn't.

But this is Ubisoft. They've had a real bad trend of either having overly ambitious games they never make and cancel, or really bad service games literally everyone can tell them are going to fail but they insist on making them. When you think of all the games they cancelled, delayed, or launched to instant death, it's bizarre they're highlighting these games as underperforming and still banking on the future of the pirate mini game.... They used to be such a good publisher but they got far too big too fast and tried to do the cod thing with AC.... Which also destroyed Activision.

Of course Sony has vowed to go that same direction..........

This isn't a surprise in the slightest. Skull and Bones looked like hallow game, right from the start anyway. Ubisoft need to get their act together. Miss the good old days, of their early 2000s titles lol

Ubisoft tell fans not to worry as Beyond Good & Evil 2 is still on track for it's 3024 release date

@Marquez
No..
No you couldn't.
I think we all get carried away with this, I rather a game is well done than the other way, remember avengers or cyberpunk on launch geesh!

There is making a game the devs are passionate about and customers that don't care about this game. I mean vehicular games are a niche as it is. Pirate games may be a niche even. The lack of getting out of your ship/Assassin's Creed already exists or even Sea of Thieves makes this game hard to recommend at all and I don't think it will sell but they won't cancel it because the staff are too passionate about the product. This and Beyond Good and Evil 2 are still taking a long time. They do know that 10 year old project flop right? Last Guardian, Duke Nukem Forever, other examples that fit. Games evolve so quickly and trends or ideas and tone/theming only last so much these days.

I don't like all Ubisoft games but the few I do like Rayman or Red Steel 2 (give me PSVR/PC VR and I'll buy it for sure like Borderlands 2 VR) are dead or re-released a lot like Rayman Legends so eh. I think Skull and Bones is a cool idea I just don't see it selling well though the passion is there for sure even Watch Dogs Legion the character idea was cool but then again their formulas for games does effect things too.

They try to do different things or a formula and them going mobile may 'kind of help them' but even then most third parties copied (as with any genre or trend in the west make your own to keep up then certain original ideas or whatever demand they see and can do as failed with COD/Half Life/Halo competitors in PS3/360 era so open worlds it is, I don't count Souls games as to me most AAs have failed to go 'we will put modern ideas to a game with modernisation of old school RPGs' and they just don't understand it at all and fail, we had better ideas in shooters, racing games and platformers let alone GTA or Doom responses then these days I think at least. For those that like Souls structure go for it. I don't care personally and don't want all games going that way but for what it is what other trends are there to jump to survival games like Nightingale (old Bioware staff) or Metroidvanias like Song of the Deep did (by Insomniac) and Fallout 76 is kind of survival like even if live service.

There is only so much they can do with their formula and that other companies have tried their hands at it so you can pick up other games instead and content updates only do so much so they really have to try to get stuff out.

Sparks of Hope is something but it isn't enough.

That and whatever the Stadia sales were for Ubisoft games (besides Luna and besides Ubisoft+ their service that how many don't use or knew existed) (even though who cares they get discounted so much why picked them up at launch and the worlds are big so either too bloated or you weren't a fan of the game design to begin with both being a case for me I don't care for most of their games personally).

@Balosi
Sure that might be true. However I would argue if they were looking for possible new talent hires there are probably cheaper methods than a funding a game that took almost a decade to finally come out and then sold incredibly soft.

I like the idea of Dreams on paper but financially I can't imagine they made much if at all any profit from it so that's kind of why I compared it to Skull & Bones. I'd be shocked if Ubisoft makes any sort of profit from Skull & Bones at this point.

the worst is yet to come for ubisoft. they need a swift kick in the ass to get back on track. this is a publisher in complete dissary and void of a creative spark of any kind. their assembly line mentality was bound to catch up with them.

Hard for me to care about what happens with this publisher. This company is largely creatively bankrupt, obsessed with monetization first. They shat on some of my favorite franchises.

"major challenges as the industry continues to shift towards mega-brands and long-lasting titles"
Said who? Your games just sucked. Own up to it.
No one needs more live services, i can assure you of that. The market is saturated as it is.

Btw this pirate game will probably not do well either.
Remember that beyond good and evil 2 game? Yeah, that was original and exciting. Did you cancel it? Reap what you sow.

How long could they expect just dance to keep selling? They undercut themselves by selling a subscription service that includes all the songs.
Also what were expecting with that mario rabbids game I saw no advertising and no trailers. I mean I wasn't looking but advertising isn't doing its job if I have to go looking right?

Seems to me, Ubisoft forgot a game to cancel.

I'm sure they can't due to the subsidies they were given by the Singaporean government though. If not for that detail I wouldn't be surprised if Skull & Bones would have indeed been canceled long ago.

Time to make splinter cell for the older audiences and Division 3 and Rayman Legends return.

It wont happen, because they like to burn money on things like Skull & Bones and not do it right.

@ThorsHammer
Looool 😂😂😂❤❤❤

I don't think Ubisoft has the ability (legally speaking) to cancel Skull & Bones as I recall reading, a while ago, that Ubisoft entered into an agreement with the Singapore government, and I think it's one of the conditions of the agreement that Ubisoft is required to release Skull & Bones...eventually.

I can't remember the last Ubisoft game I played and completed. I recently started Watch_Dogs 2, but I'm burnt out on open-world games in the Ubisoft style, so I haven't continued playing it in almost a month.

In the comments section of virtually every article on here now are posts on acquisitions and buy outs. It's so tedious that this what gaming has become.

@InternetUser I don't have a issue with the same as long as its quality and that not a Ubisoft game. Release a game that isnt broken on release do good quality control and stop making every single game liveservice people only have so much spare time to play.

@NEStalgia The games do have specific problems of their own like Just Dance has the annual release model competing with its own subscription service. There was always going to be a point where the 2 clashing would cause sales to fizzle out. Having the physical version just be a download code in a box, forcing you to sign up for an Ubisoft account to access any content in the 2023 version and making the game online only doesn't help its cause either (party games work best with the option to play locally).

If I recall correctly, since 2020 Assassin's Creed Valhalla and the Switch port of Ezio Collection were the only Ubisoft games that didn't get massive sales soon after launch. So being wary of the infamous price drop strategy would affect most games.

I think what's going to happen in the end is basically that Assassin's Creed takes the role of CoD (it kind of already is given how many studios worked on Valhalla). Everything not Assassin's Creed that can legally be cancelled gets cancelled while virtually the entire company works on Assassin's Creed.

Gladly stopped buying Ubisoft games around the time of the abuse reports. Doesn’t hurt that their output has been boilerplated into oblivion.

@Grumblevolcano What I'm wary of is games that have had HARD price drops, faster, have somehow not "underperformed", and games that died a hard death fast or were total launch failures are not cited at all, while these high profile games "underperformed." They did not mention or attribute their shortcomings any of the games that they launched that were catastrophic total and complete failures....at all....they glossed over that they launched GaaS games that basically died on launch day and were unceremoniously shut down immediately at release, and instead put their blame on titles that had to have been at least somewhat successful as "underperforming."

Unless they post numbers on those titles, I'm still thinking that they "underperformed" in the Square-Enix TR2013/Outriders sense (I.E. why didn't it sell 1 billion copies like we estimated?) in order to deflect other problems they're trying to bury.

I mean if we go by this statement, Roller Champions and Extraction are just okey dokey, Mario is the problem! I don't buy it.

And I'm not convinced the price drop strategy is as problematic as they claim. Yeah, Sony used to do that and then stopped to do this whole premium thing, but Ubisoft was on the fence and was the last to join in other than MS with the $70 price thing in general. It's obvious that value pricing is a key part of their strategy, and they're still not clear here if "underperform" means revenue or if it means sales volume. I'm still interpreting it to mean sales volume which implies the price cut did not yield the expected sales increase, rather than that the price cut hindered total revenue.

It's also not yet clear if "underperforming" is the Q4 theme across the industry in a shrinking economy, or if it's just a Ubisoft issue. Q4 showed a sluggish holiday shopping season and signs of faltering major retailers in general. I'm not sure ANY product didn't "underperform" in any industry, so there's vagueness here about what's really a problem. There's a few points of smoke and mirrors going on with this I think.

AC becoming CoD was their plan a decade ago and a big part of their problem. Everything else is treated as a side business and it shows.

@sonicmeerkat The marketing for it was mostly Nintendo's responsibility as a Mario title. FWIW, Nintendo did give it seemingly equal treatment with their total lineup with Bayo3, Splatoon 3, etc, mostly featuring all the games in spreads of new Switch games in general Switch promotional ads. But a TRPG is never going to sell like a 2D platformer, so it depends on what the sales expectations looked like.

@NEStalgia Sparks of Hope and Just Dance 2023 were the biggest Ubisoft games of 2022, that's likely why they mentioned those in particular as examples.

@Grumblevolcano Sure, but it strikes me a bit off when they say earnings were down and blamed it on those games underperforming when as you say they were their biggest games. It's like they were implying that the games that catastrophically failed were simply expected to catastrophically fail, so it was accounted for...

@Nem It's insane how out of touch some big companies are. We want some quality games, fun games, something new and the older games people want dont get released. And not everything does not need triple A 100 million dollar releases.

Actually "feel bad" for Ubi, they were on a pretty decent roll with AC Origins / Odyssey, The Division and Far Cry 4 / Primal last gen, but the whole unmentionable scandal, and the soulless bloat of Valhalla, Far Cry 5 and the trash that was Watchdogs Legion and Riders Republic and the never ending delays of this game and the doomed Prince of Persia remake just make them seem creatively bankrupt and out of date, Hope they can regain that spark somehow, perhaps scaling back on the size of their games might be a path to follow.

Ubi should keep in mind, that no one wants 100+ hours games. 30-40 hours model worked for ages and still works. ...and giving money into 25864269631th multiplayer brawler or shooter is flushing money down the toilet.