The up-and-coming contender for Most Delayed Game Ever, Skull & Bones, will definitely be releasing next year, according to a new statement from Ubisoft.
Ah, Skull and Bones , seeing you in the news cycle again is like reuniting with an old friend every time. And we've had many of those reunions over the years, since the game was announced at E3 2017 (back when E3 was still a thing) and has been delayed over and over again ever since. But Ubisoft Singapore seem determined to make the last delay its final one, as they've reiterated that the game is absolutely, definitely coming out within this fiscal year.
According to yahoo!news, Ubisoft Singapore's outgoing managing director, Darryl Long, mentioned as much at a recent company event. This means that Skull & Bones should come out sometime between January and March of next year. Whether they'll be able to stick to that release window this time remains to be seen, but given the game's many previous delays I'm not holding my breath.
Skull & Bones: Forever Lost At Sea?
If it does end up meeting that deadline it'll have been in development for about 10 years. Which isn't quite as long as some other infamous former residents like Duke Nukem Forever have been stuck there, but an absurd amount of development time nonetheless. How on earth did it come to this?
Well, to call Skull & Bones's development troubled would be an understatement, according to a Kotaku report from 2021. The game was originally supposed to be a live service expansion to Assassin's Greed IV: Black Flag, but over time the project ballooned into a full-on standalone AAA game whose size and scope proved too difficult for Ubisoft Singapore to handle.
Yet the project was allegedly not allowed to die either, due to deals with the Singaporean government obligating Ubisoft to release it in some shape or form. So Ubisoft Singapore are caught between a rock and a hard place, having to deliver a product that is not within their capabilities to make yet should at least somewhat recoup the mounting development costs while satisfying their Singaporean sponsors.
Whether they'll be successful is still up in the air, but considering that a beta test phase earlier this year failed to impress its participants, I have my doubts. It's very possible that Skull & Bones will be more fun as a recurring news story than an actual game! But who knows, maybe the game had a sudden growth spurt in the past few months and will manage to surprise us all soon.