Late Wednesday, Ubisoft released a financial statement outlining 2023 plans, and while Skull and Bones received another delay, three projects were cancelled.
Skull and Bones was announced way back during E3 2017, embracing the naval combat of its predecessor Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag, and essentially starting work on a Jack Sparrow simulator, allowing gamers to become the captain of their own vessel at sea. Late yesterday, however, fans were slapped with another delay during Ubisoft’s financial conference call and the surprising, sad news of three unannounced game projects getting hit with cancellations. This is the sixth time the maritime title has received a delay and its another massive one with no end in sight.
The Ubisoft financial report confirms this by saying, “Players will be able to discover the beauty of Skull and Bones in the upcoming beta phase. The additional time has already paid off and brought impressive improvements to its quality, which has been confirmed by recent playtests. We believe players will be positively surprised by its evolution. We have decided to postpone its release in order to have more time to showcase a much more polished and balanced experience and to build awareness. Skull and Bones will now be released early 2023-24,” with a massive release window of 2023-24.
This is where things become a little sadder, considering the public had no idea three other titles were in development, yet they’ve also received their cancellation notice. Ubisoft cites a focus on ‘mega-brands’ and the industry’s shift toward them as their main reasoning for cancelling the unannounced projects. As of this moment, Ubisoft has also not revealed anything regarding these projects and whether their workforce will be affected by the decision.
In a long-winded statement from CEO Yves Guillemot, he says the company’s future is bright “We expect our strategy to build long-lasting live games and transform our biggest brands into truly global phenomenon with multiple offerings across platforms and business models, to ultimately generate significant value creation, with strong topline and operating income growth over the coming years,” by focusing on their already established brands such as Rainbow Six and Assassin’s Creed. It also seems this may include Splinter Cell, as shown by Ubisoft Belgium’s Twitter in a teaser post that can be seen below.
Ultimately, fans of the upcoming Skull and Bones will have to wait for yet another year to get their hands on the complete product. Ubisoft did mention they’re moving forward with a ‘beta phase’ for the title in their statement, so fans can stay up to date with them by following the official Twitter and jump in when available.
