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Ubisoft swashbuckler Skull & Bones delayed until 2019-2020

Ubisoft swashbuckler Skull & Bones delayed until 2019-2020

Ubisoft has told investors that open sea pirate adventure Skull & Bones has been pushed back to the publisher’s 2019-2020 financial year.

In an earnings report for the year 2017-2018, Ubisoft said: “In line with previous practices and in view of the acceleration of our digital transformation, growth in back-catalog sales and excellent momentum of recent releases, Ubisoft has decided to give itself more time to develop Skull & Bones to offer players an even more engaging experience.”

Skull & Bones was revealed at E3 last year. The naval adventure game is being developed by Ubisoft Singapore, one of the studios behind Assassin’s Creed 4: Black Flag. That entry’s ship-to-ship combat proved popular enough that Ubisoft have fleshed it out into an fully-fledged cutlass-swinging release.

Skull & Bones was originally slated for release in the last six months of this year. However, due to more general success across the board for Ubisoft, the publisher has decided it can afford to spend more time to work on the game.

The last year has been a strong one for Ubisoft, granting them the space to put more time into releases. The publisher reports total annual sales of $2,003 million; up 18.6% year on year, outstripping target of around $1,885 million.

“Ubisoft ended the fiscal year on a very positive note, with continued excellent execution across the board,” said co-founded and CEO Yves Guillemot.

“The Group further strengthened its brands thanks to the quality of its games, strong live services and a deep commitment to player communities. During the fourth quarter, we reached a record of peak concurrent users thanks to record engagement levels and esports viewership for Rainbow Six Siege, the successful launch of Far Cry 5 – the second biggest launch in Ubisoft’s history – and continued strong performance by Assassin’s Creed Origins, Mario + Rabbids Kingdom Battle and our back-catalog titles. As a result, we have outperformed our financial targets, with record-high sales, digital and back-catalog revenues, and profitability.”


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Staff Writer

Natalie Clayton is an Edinburgh-based freelance writer and game developer. Besides PCGamesInsider and Pocketgamer.biz, she's written across the games media landscape and was named in the 2018 GamesIndustry.biz 100 Rising Star list.