Many gamers wondered if consumers would ever end up seeing Skull and Bones release after reports of the game's tumultuous development. Now Ubisoft has claimed that Skull and Bones will be ready to release within the next year.
Skull and Bones has been in development for nine years at this point, which is generally never a good sign for the development of any game. Last year, a report surfaced detailing Skull and Bones' troubled development and basically noted all of the issues that the company had with the game. One of the main issues that seemingly hampered the project was a lack of direction, as the game's development restarted multiple times with different project leads.
The game changed from being an Assassin's Creed 4: Black Flag DLC to a separate Assassin's Creed spinoff called Black Flag Infinite before Ubisoft finally settled on Skull and Bones. Despite all of these issues, Ubisoft's Chief Financial Officer, Frederick Duguet, recently noted that the game's development is going well as everything has allegedly been proceeding as planned. Duguet even stated that he was "very happy" with how development was going at Ubisoft Singapore and has no plans to cancel the project.
Back in late 2021, leaker Tom Henderson claimed to leak the gameplay details of Skull and Bones. Henderson claimed that ships will be categorized into five size-based tiers, ranging from fishing boats to large galleons, with these categories being further divided based on the vessel's function such as either Cargo, Combat, or Exploration. It will be interesting to see if these details make it into the finished product owing to Ubisoft's various shifts in direction with Skull and Bones.
Among other issues with the game's development, the co-director of Skull and Bones announced his departure from Ubisoft back in January. Antoine Henry's leaving was likely a big blow to the development of Skull and Bones, which makes one wonder why Duguet stated that everything has been proceeding as planned. Henry announced his departure from the company on LinkedIn but gave no specific reason for his leaving.
Ubisoft has claimed that Skull and Bones will release at some point between April 2022 and April 2023 along with a few other anticipated titles. Whether or not the game will be ready to release in this window remains to be seen after the company's rocky development with the title so far, however, it will be interesting to see what direction Ubisoft decided to go in after all these years of development.
Source: TheGamer