Surprise! Ubisoft delays Skull and Bones yet again

The oft-delayed Skull and Bones still isn’t ready for release, as Ubisoft confirmed it has delayed the pirate game for the sixth time. Skull and Bones will no longer release on March 9, and now just has a vague release window of “early 2023 to 2024.” At this point, we can’t really be surprised that this happened again. 

First announced at E3 2017, Skull and Bones was initially intended for release in 2018. It finally resurfaced last year after a couple of delays with a November 8, 2022 release date. That morphed into a March 9, 2023 release date, which Ubisoft has now nixed for a vague release window that basically amounts to them wanting to release Skull and Bones sometime this fiscal year. Still, Ubisoft seems optimistic about the pirate game despite its never-ending string of delays. 

“Players will be able to discover the beauty of Skull and Bones in the upcoming beta phase,” a press release explains. “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.”

This delay announcement comes as part of a larger update to the company’s financial targets for this fiscal year and next, where Ubisoft detailed the negative impacts of “surprisingly slower” game sales for Mario + Rabbids: Sparks of Hope and Just Dance 2023. Not only has Skull and Bones been delayed, but Ubisoft has also canceled three unannounced games that were in development atits various studios. Ubisoft’s “recent launches have not performed as well as expected,” so the company is focusing its efforts “on building our brands and live services into some of the most powerful within the industry.” Ubisoft will also reduce its spending by 200 million euros over the next two years.

Thankfully for Ubisoft, its next fiscal year, which runs through March 2024, looks a lot more interesting thanks to games like Assassin’s Creed Mirage and Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora. Now we just have to wait and see if Skull and Bones will also be part of that, or if it continues to get delayed. 

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Tomas Franzese