In its recent full-year earnings report, Ubisoft revealed that Skull and Bones had been delayed again. It’s now set to release in fiscal year 2023, which means sometime between April 1st 2022 and March 31st 2023. Originally slated to release in late 2018, the naval combat title has been delayed numerous times. The last major update it received was in September 2020 when creative director Elisabeth Pellen said development was in “full swing” with a new vision.
Ubisoft CFO Frédérick Duguet offered some details on the delay in earnings call (transcribed by VGC), stating that, “We strongly believe in the team’s creative vision and they have been given an increasingly ambitious mandate for the game. Production led by [Ubisoft] Singapore has been advancing well over the past 12 months and the promise is better than ever. The additional time will allow the team to fully deliver on its vision.”
CEO Yves Guillemot added that, “The Singapore studio has been developing for a long time a big part of the Assassin’s Creed franchise so it’s a really good studio. What we have been doing to make sure they could really come strongly with Skull and Bones is we increased the associate studios that are working with them at the moment so there’s a good and big team now working on the game and the last 12 months have really been good in terms of the way things were coming along, so we are confident they can really bring something really exceptional for the market.”
Rumors of the title’s troubled development have been circulating for a while now. In 2020, development had reportedly been rebooted yet again with a focus on “live service story-telling.” Ubisoft Singapore also faced scrutiny last year when multiple allegations of abuse surfaced which led to managing director Hugues Ricour leaving the studio (but remaining an employee at Ubisoft).
More details on Skull and Bones had been promised for this year. Perhaps the next Ubisoft Forward in June could offer some updates. Stay tuned in the meantime.
