#Ubisoft skull and bones series#

“Just having people working for four or five years on something that doesn’t move forward, that destroys anyone,” said one former developer. Some on the core team developing Skull & Bones are hopeful they can still avoid a similar fate but are also incredibly desperate to ship the game and move onto something new. One current developer compared the project’s trajectory to Bioware’s Anthem, another big multiplayer game-as-a-service that looked great in demos but launched broken and incomplete. Production has dragged on for years, but many current and former developers say they still have little to show for it.

In addition to hiring a certain number of people at its Singapore studio in exchange for generous subsidies, they said, Ubisoft Singapore must also launch original brand new IPs in the next few years.

But three sources also told Kotaku that a deal with the Singapore government requires it. In part, that’s because live service games have become an increasingly important and lucrative part of the Assassin’s Creed publisher’s portfolio. Eitherway, Ubisoft has bet big on the multiplayer pirate adventure and is determined to ship it one way or another. As the timeline stretched out, the developer's ambitions for graphics and gameplay grew, eventually earning its own codename while developing its unique set of challenges.More generously, another former developer said that Electronic Arts or Take-Two for example probably wouldn’t have attempted it in the first place. That project would be briefly known as 'Black Flag Infinite.' To achieve a fast turnaround, the studio planned to reuse assets from 'Assassin's Creed: Black Flag'' However, that project got off the ground in late 2013, right as the Xbox One and PlayStation 4 launched, quickly making some of those assets outdated. As reported by Kotaku, the basic concept for the game that would become 'Skull & Bones' was to take the naval combat from 'Assassin's Creed: Black Flag' and combine it with the live service model of 'Ghost Recon Phantoms,' a free-to-play multiplayer title the studio maintained. However, Ubisoft Singapore rose to prominence within its parent company when it contributed to 'Assassin's Creed: Black Flag,' an experience that helped establish the studio 'as proud innovators of naval gameplay and water technology,' according to the official website. Here is everything fans need to know about the troubled development cycle of 'Skull & Bones' and why Ubisoft won't be releasing it anytime soon. Now, more than four years have passed since the game was revealed in 2017, and a new Kotaku exposé makes it seem like the project is still far out on the horizon.

However, the title would miss that deadline and many more. That timeline told fans that 'Skull & Bones' had already been in development, in one form or another, for up to four years, making the expected 2018 release date seem well within reach.

#Ubisoft skull and bones series#

The project was officially announced at E3 2017, and a series of developer interviews presented during its unveiling established a connection to 2013's 'Assassin's Creed: Black Flag,' which was celebrated for its ship-to-ship combat mechanics.

Sometimes, however, the best-laid plans go awry, as has become the case with the long-gestating 'Skull & Bones,' a pirate adventure game that will be the first significant original IP released from Ubisoft Singapore.