Ubisoft says it sees “major challenges” and therefore wants to be more careful and focus on big, well-known titles. For that reason, three unannounced games have been canceled. In addition, the company is once again postponing Skull & Bones, “to show the game better.”
According to Ubisoft, the quality of Skull & Bones has now “improved a lot” thanks to earlier delays, something that would have been confirmed in recent playtests. However, the company still wants to postpone the game in order to show that “improved and more balanced experience” to players. Ubisoft seems to be afraid that the pirate game would be disappointing if it were released now and therefore wants to work on the marketing of the game.
Skull & Bones is now due to release “early” in Ubisoft’s next fiscal year. That fiscal year begins in April. The game was announced in 2017 with an expected fall 2018 release. In the years since, the game has been delayed several times, the most recently communicated release date being March 9, 2023 .
Ubisoft also says it has had several setbacks in recent times, including increased investments due to the recent lockdowns “and new ways of working”, the deteriorating macroeconomic situation and “trends around the last weeks of December and the first weeks of January”. According to the company, the consequences of those setbacks can be seen in Mario + Rabbids: Sparks of Hope and Just Dance 2023, two games that recently appeared but failed to meet Ubisoft’s expectations.
The company nevertheless says that it is looking positively at the future and that it still has sufficient cash in hand. For example, in recent years it has invested in a strategy with a focus on major titles, with names such as Assassin’s Creed, Far Cry and the Tom Clancy games being mentioned. “However, no games have yet appeared under this new investment strategy and recent titles have not sold as well as expected.” That’s why the company now decides to cancel three titles, in addition to four unannounced games that were scrapped in July last year. The company provides no further information about these scrapped games.
The French publisher and developer also wants to save 200 million euros over the next two years, including restructuring, but says it still wants to continue to hire talented people. The company also adjusts its turnover forecast for the past quarter downwards, from 830 million euros to 725 million euros.
