Highlights

  • Skull and Bones falls short of expectations, with disappointing reviews and sales failing to match up to its long development time.
  • Sea of Thieves casts a shadow over Skull and Bones, stealing the spotlight with its shared pirate world and upcoming PlayStation release.
  • Originally a spin-off of Assassin's Creed 4: Black Flag, Skull and Bones struggles to capture the expansive pirate experience fans crave.

There have been some truly great pirate-themed video games over the last few decades, with Sid Meier's Pirates!, LEGO Pirates of the Caribbean, and Sea Dogs all being great examples. But while those games were great for their time, they don't offer the expansive life on the high seas that fans are looking for from a modern pirate game, with Assassin's Creed 4: Black Flag setting such a high bar back in 2013. And now, over a decade later, Skull and Bones hoped to raise that bar even higher.

Unfortunately, Skull and Bones hasn't quite made the splash that Ubisoft wanted. Currently sitting at a disappointingly low 57 on Metacritic, Skull and Bones feels like a game stuck in the past, though with a bit of love and care it could be able to drag itself to the present day with its seasonal approach. But it doesn't seem like Sea of Thieves is going to let that happen by releasing on a new platform and becoming the talk of the moment.

Skull and Bones captain
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Sea of Thieves Has Knocked The Wind Out of Skull and Bones' Sails

Skull and Bones Has Been In Development For Over a Decade

Though it was announced back in 2017, Skull and Bones' development actually began all the way back in 2013, just over a decade ago. After the immense critical and commercial success of Assassin's Creed 4: Black Flag, Ubisoft made the quick decision to double down on the pirate genre, putting into development an MMO spin-off initially titled Black Flag Infinite. Of course, this MMO would never see the light of day, at least not in its originally-pitched form.

After Black Flag's engine and tech became outdated, Ubisoft pivoted Black Flag Infinite's development, turning it into a standalone title called Skull and Bones. Initially revealed to the world in 2017 and set for a 2018 release, Skull and Bones was originally described as an online multiplayer game that featured a shared world and team-based game modes. Of course, Skull and Bones would receive more than its fair share of major delays, with each one molding the game into something slightly different.

Sea of Thieves May Have Ended Skull and Bones' Reign Before It Even Started

After over a decade of development, and seven years since its first official reveal, Skull and Bones has finally hit store shelves, and it hasn't been the most successful launch for Ubisoft. With some disappointing early sales numbers and some very low review scores, it's hard to believe that Skull and Bones was worth the wait, or worth the effort on the part of its many different developers over the years. And that feeling is made even more apparent with the news that Sea of Thieves is coming to PlayStation soon.

Announced on February 21, just five days after Skull and Bones' full release, Sea of Thieves will be coming to PlayStation 5 on April 30 2024. One of Xbox's four horsemen of its new multi-platform experiment, there's a lot of buzz around Sea of Thieves' upcoming PlayStation release, and that buzz has already drowned out most of the talk surrounding Skull and Bones' disappointing launch.

Originally released all the way back in 2018, Sea of Thieves ended up delivering on Skull and Bones' initial premise, giving players a shared PvPvE pirate world to explore. Beating Skull and Bones to the punch by six years, Sea of Thieves has naturally become a major point of comparison for Ubisoft's long-awaited game, and now, Sea of Thieves has the chance to prove itself to a wider audience than ever before, and if it all goes to plan, then it seems unlikely that Skull and Bones will manage to retain the spotlight for long.