Ubisoft pushes Skull & Bones back (again) alongside another game

Ubisoft today released its financial information for the first half of the 2023-24 fiscal year. Among the financial results it sneakily revealed that it has pushed Skull & Bones, its chronically delayed pirate multiplayer adventure game, into the first months of next year. This marks yet another shifted goalpost for the troubled game/

At last report — I should probably say “at last delay,” Ubisoft planned to release Skull & Bones “early” in the current fiscal year. As said year is now more than half-over, Ubisoft has now specified the game will launch in the early months of 2024, or the fourth quarter of the fiscal year. No, it has not given a specific release date. At this point it feels like it would save more time to inform you when Skull & Bones actually launches.

Ubisoft also obliquely referred to a delay for another game in its financial statement, saying, that the “overperformance of Q2” resulted in large numbers “without releasing the other large game it had initially planned to launch during the last quarter of the current fiscal year. The Company has decided to launch this other large game in FY2024-25, so as to maximize its value creation.” It doesn’t say which game that is, but one of the biggest titles in Ubisoft’s upcoming games catalog — which it didn’t otherwise mention — is Star Wars: Outlaws.

Skull & Bones held a closed beta a few weeks ago, suggesting the game is in a near-playable state. However, it has not had a release date in quite some time, begging the question I’ve asked before of whether Ubisoft should just scuttle this ailing ship rather than string it out to further and further release dates. It remains to be seen if the other delayed game is Star Wars: Outlaws, which also has yet to have a concrete release date attached to it.