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Skull and Bones’ price has been slashed by $25 after less than three weeks

Carmen Winstead

Carmen Winstead

Member
Ubisoft’s second $70 game, Skull and Bones, has seen its price reduced significantly less than three weeks after its release.
Following a troubled development that saw the game delayed on a number of occasions and rebooted in 2020, Skull and Bones was finally released on February 16, priced $69.99 / £69.99.
But it hasn’t taken long for retailers to slash its price, with Best Buy currently offering the PS5 and Xbox Series X/S versions for $44.99, and UK retailer Hitpricing them at £49.85.

During an earnings call the week before its release, Ubisoft was asked why it had chosen to charge $70 for Skull and Bones and potentially limit the size of its player base, despite its live service leanings.
In response, Ubisoft CEO Yves Guillemot asserted that Skull and Bones deserved to be a full-price game because of its scale.
“You will see that Skull and Bones is a fully-fledged game,” he said. “It’s a very big game, and we feel that people will really see how vast and complete that game is. It’s a really full, triple… quadruple-A game, that will deliver in the long run.”
Ubisoft released Skull and Bones alongside a free eight-hour trial, which is available on all platforms and lets players carry over their progress to the full game should they choose to purchase it.

While Skull and Bones was originally planned to be Ubisoft’s first $70 game, its delays meant the publisher’s first game to be released at the increased price point was last December’s Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora.
It was also heavily discounted quickly, with its price falling to $49.99 / £43.85 within two weeks of its release.

Source
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Not long until we got the first AAAA game for 20 bucks!
 
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Dorfdad

Dorfdad

Gold Member
SHIVER ME TIMBERS!!!! NO ONE SAW THIS COMING!

fe434cd715cfbff842db995edb5082a2.jpg
 
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King Dazzar

King Dazzar

Member
But they were just telling us how successful it was. I'm no mathematician, but something doesn't add up. Could Ubisoft be talking shit? Surely not.

Sadly, they could give it away free and I still wouldn't be interested. Not worth my time.
 
Krappadizzle

Krappadizzle

Member
Ubisoft has a tendency to put their games on sale pretty soon after release, I've been surprised that Avatar hasn't seen a discount yet myself.

The writing was on the wall for Skull and Bones though quite a while ago.
 
AJUMP23

AJUMP23

Gold Member
Nothing to see here people. Move along, big game discounts 3 weeks after release very common. Unless you are nintendo, then you never see a discount.

Game was overpriced and the video I saw of the game did not look as fun as the ship combat from AC Black Flag.
 
Zimmy68

Zimmy68

Member
Interesting article but Skull and Bones is $70 everywhere again.
I don't think the game is worth $20 but let's not equate a maybe one day sale as a mass sell off.
 
OrtizTwelve

OrtizTwelve

Member
I feel sorry for anyone who paid $70 for this. As time has shown, the vast majority of these dime-a-dozen live service games always sink in price rapidly a month or so after release.
 
yurinka

yurinka

Member
DonF said:
Ubisoft CEO defends Skull and Bones’ $70 price despite its live service leanings, calls it ‘quadruple-A’

so... what happened? Yves is so full of BS
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They asked by the game is expensive, and he replied that because the game budget has been very expensive (this is what AAAA means).

In Moby Games we saw almost 7000 people worked on it. Other than Diablo IV (over 9000) and Far Cry 6 (over 7000) I think there isn't any other game in Moby Games with a longer list of credited people in their game credits. Below Skull & Bones the nextt one I found are Fortnite (over 5700) or Starfield with over 4000 people.

We also know the game has been in the works for a longer than usual development time. So yes, the game must have been so fucking expensive to be made, way more than the average AAA (developed in around 5-9 years with around 1000-2500 people on its game credits). This is why it's called AAAA.

$70 is the typical price for AAA and AAAA games even if they are GaaS. See many examples like FIFA, NBA, CoD and so on.
 
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Raven117

Raven117

Member
All they had to do was reskin black flag to Take place in and around Singapore.

Would have been awesome.

Instead, we got 10 years of development hell. And this strange game.
 
skit_data

skit_data

Member
From what I've seen of the game I don't think there will be a discount deep enough for me to ever consider buying this. It looks like they boiled down all the bad bits of the Ubisoft formula to create a concoction of pure crap tbh.
 
Dorfdad

Dorfdad

Gold Member
OrtizTwelve said:
I feel sorry for anyone who paid $70 for this. As time has shown, the vast majority of these dime-a-dozen live service games always sink in price rapidly a month or so after release.
Click to expand...
Not only that with today’s modern developers it’s best usually to wait about six months to a year for all the patches to make the game what it should’ve been at lunch at a much cheaper price. I’ve got a large enough backlog that I can hang on a few months.
 
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