Skull & Bones has been delayed again and fans have pointed out the irony of Ubisoft launching a number of naval battle games while waiting on the development of this one.
In Ubisoft’s latest earnings report, Skull & Bones was said to be targeting a window of “Q4 2023-24”, which works out to be a date between the start of January and the end of March 2024 (via IGN).
Before this, the game was going to launch in “early 2023-2024”, however, the likelihood of a release this year became slimmer and slimmer as time went on.
Additionally, Ubisoft announced that one of its “large” games has been pushed to the financial year starting in 2024, meaning that it is expected to arrive in April 2024 at the earliest.
There was no affirmation of what this title was, though there is a chance that Ubisoft was referring to Star Wars: Outlaws.
“We are excited to bring our future lineup to players, and to deliver on our strategy and continue reaching larger audiences and building an increasingly recurring business thanks to major brands and live services,” said CEO Yves Guillemot in a statement.
Since the start of Skull & Bones development at Ubisoft Singapore in 2013, the game has been marred with multiple delays and reboots.
Most recently, Elisabeth Pellen, the third creative director on the game, was transferred from Singapore to a role as online editorial director in Paris in September.
All in all, Skull & Bones’ shaky trajectory hasn’t instilled a lot of faith in fans, and with this sixth delay, a level of irony has been injected into the discussions of its future.
“What amazes me the most is the fact they weren’t able to figure out how to make this game in a decade, yet within that same decade and in just a short notice, they did 3 back-to-back naval battle AC games,” said one.
Those are Assassin’s Creed 4: Black Flag, Assassin’s Creed Freedom Cry and Assassin’s Creed Rogue. Other fans counted the naval battles in Assassin’s Creed Odyssey and praise was paid to Assassin’s Creed 3‘s ship sections too.
However, Skull & Bones will feature sea monsters, survival mechanics, customisable ships, multiplayer modes and more all for PC and the current generation of consoles, as shown off in August’s closed beta.
In other gaming news, Studio Wildcard’s remake of Ark: Survival Evolved entered early access this week, yet players criticised its poor technical performance and even compared it to a PowerPoint presentation.