Ubisoft Cancels 3 Unannounced Games, Delays Skull & Bones Again - News
by William D'Angelo , posted on 11 January 2023 / 3,658 Views
Ubisoft has announced it has cancelled three unannounced games and has delayed Skull & Bones once again.
"Ensure all our energy is focused on building our brands and live services into some of the most powerful within the industry. As a consequence, we have decided to cancel three unannounced projects, on top of the four already announced in July 2022," reads the press release from Ubisoft.
The press released adds, "Players will be able to discover the beauty of Skull & 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 & Bones will now be released early 2023-24."
Read a message from Ubisoft Co-Founder and CEO Yves Guillemot below:
"We are clearly disappointed by our recent performance. We are facing contrasted market dynamics as the industry continues to shift towards mega-brands and everlasting live games, in the context of worsening economic conditions affecting consumer spending.
"Despite excellent ratings and players’ reception as well as an ambitious marketing plan, we were surprised by Mario + Rabbids: Sparks of Hope underperformance in the final weeks of 2022 and early January. Just Dance 2023 underperformed as well.
"Therefore, with the approval of the Board of Directors, we are taking additional important strategic and operational decisions today. It is key to continue adapting our organization, to further strengthen our execution and to ensure we both deliver amazing games to players as well as great value creation.
"The industry’s long-term prospects remain promising, and I am convinced Ubisoft is well positioned to benefit from this momentum thanks to the strength of our teams, brands, production capacity, technology and balance-sheet. Our back-catalogue remains very healthy with notably robust activity on Rainbow Six Siege, great momentum for our Assassin’s Creed games, and generally solid performance from our live games.
"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."
Read a message from Ubisoft CFO Frederik Buguet below:
"Our decisive reaction and our additional cost optimization measures should help us navigate the current challenging economic environment and ensure a leaner organization for the years to come.
"Leveraging the biggest pipeline of games in the Ubisoft’s history, 2023-24 will see the releases of Assassin’s Creed Mirage, Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora, Skull & Bones and other yet-to-be announced premium games, including a large one, as well as promising Free-to-Play titles for some of our biggest brands."
A life-long and avid gamer, William D'Angelo was first introduced to VGChartz in 2007. After years of supporting the site, he was brought on in 2010 as a junior analyst, working his way up to lead analyst in 2012 and taking over the hardware estimates in 2017. He has expanded his involvement in the gaming community by producing content on his own YouTube channel and Twitch channel. You can contact the author on Twitter @TrunksWD.
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I feel like the "Again" in the news story title should be in all caps lol
Ubisoft is collapsing right in front of our eyes!
I have a feeling Skull & Bones will be one of the longest waits for one of the most underwhelming games since Duke Nukem Forever.
can't be as bad as duke nukem forever, can it?
Meanwhile Sea of Thieves is up to its seventh season...
Has Skull and Bones entered Beyond Good and Evil 2 territory yet?
For Sparks of Hope i kinda feel bad.. game looks excellent yet people seem to just be waiting for price to drop. I did tho, might pick it up now.
But also, Ubisoft seems so out of touch rn. Just dance barely sells anymore.. read the room. The amount of bad decisions they took lately is astounishing. They must be relieved Avatar 2 is performing well.
Trash company
Gets easier and easier to just ignore Ubisoft's output as the years go by. Everything interesting about them has for a long time now been outside of the company's "mega-brands" as they put it, and with this news as well as the whole abuse scandal, it's nice that I can just not bother with their games anymore.
“Skull & Bones will now be released early 2023-24."
What does this mean?
Q1 of the financial year that runs from April 2023-March 2024 I believe, which means it has been delayed from March 2023 to sometime in calendar Q2 (April-June).
And what about Prince of Persia?
Another delay for the Sea of Thieves killer? disappointing.
