Ubisoft CEO defends Skull and Bones’ $70 price despite its live service leanings, calls it ‘quadruple-A’
Ubisoft CEO defends Skull and Bones’ $70 price despite its live service leanings, calls it ‘quadruple-A’
“People will really see how vast and complete that game is”…
At a time when AAA often sucks so much, it sounds really out of touch to say your overpriced game is "quadruple-A".
Xfinity "10G" energy
110He's a pretty out of touch ceo so it checks out
15It sounds about as out of touch as their neurons.
Sucks that the idiots forcing these stupid ideas get buckets of money though.
8
I bet it’s just assassins creed.
Sail the seas, activate ice bergs to unlock the map, gather five million useless trinkets.
80From what I read the game is pretty much a repurposed Black Flag naval gameplay.
40I mean that is what it spun off from. It's been in development hell all the way from then.
25I was mostly joking because Ubisoft pretty much only has one game they reskin endlessly, but I’m somehow not surprised.
6
I played a closed beta quite a while back and it’s pretty much this. Was all set to play the whole weekend but only made it like 2 hrs in before uninstalling. it feels like just fetch quests, and checking off boxes, and I didn’t find it fun at all.
22
Fuck me, that is some quadruple-A-level bullshit from our man Yves. I played the closed beta and I am sorry to say that this game is going to tank, hard. Its gameplay loop is waaaay too simplistic to be making those grandiose claims.
64Just like battery, the more A it has the smaller it is, but the price stay the same or much more expensive.
24
Is that the same shit company that was telling us to get used to not owning games? Why would I spend $70 to borrow something they probably won’t finish making before release?
43Why would I spend $70 to borrow something they probably won’t finish making before release?
So that you can hang around and wait for the talent in the community to fix it and make it at least closer to a game worth $70
7You think Ubisoft games will have modding? Hahahaha no, no it will flop on launch and the live service elements will die within a year
8
Big 'Comcast 10g' vibes here.
Ubisoft is consistent with being on my blocked producers list on steam.
42Maybe it's how long it's been in development, maybe it's how many times that they've changed direction, or maybe it's just that Ubisoft just put so much garbage in their games, but I predict that this game is going to be a trainwreck.
I was intrigued when they first announced it, but now I'm just so fucking sick of Ubisoft and their bullshit that I'm now just curious to see just how much of a mess it turns out to be.
41You mean when it was a game and not a shitty live service treadmill?
13It’s literally sunk cost fallacy, they wasted so much money for this game, but always spent more instead of putting it in a drawer. Nobody cares about pirates anymore, and lot of ppl are tired of the live service games. Add to this that the Black Flag remake is in the works, so not many will have the urge to buy the game, and it will fail spectacularly.
3
oh shit we making shit up? ARMORED CORE 6 WAS SEPTUPPLED S.
37Quadruple of $0 is how much they'll get from me.
36All AAA games and AAA studios are garbage.
Long live the indie game developer
34Just wait a year or two and then play the stuff people are still talking about. It's hilarious how often it's indy games.
13FromSoft, Santa Monica?
7I don't like FromSoft games personally, but I can recognize that they are well-made and aren't problematic in the ways that other major AAA studios are.
So I'll just acknowledge that of course there will be some notable exceptions, despite my hyperbolic use of "all" in my original comment. I'm a huge fan of BotW and TotK and Nintendo certainly counts as a AAA studio, but I think those games are exemplary and also non-problematic in the ways other major studios are. But despite these very real and very notable exceptions, I think my statement still stands pretty well as a general rule.
Oh and the only Santa Monica games I've played are Twisted Metal: Black (2001) and God of War (2005) so I'll simply abstain from an opinion on them as it doesn't seem fair to me to judge them based on experience that is now two decades old.
edit: also I see you were downvoted and while I know that doesn't matter, just want you to know that I didn't downvote you and I don't think you said anything inappropriate or off-topic so I wish whoever did had not.
11
Oh yes. I will buy this when the price drops to five bucks.
28I’ll grab it in four years, when they give it away for free. And never ever play it.
2I probably still won't. Ubisoft games just aren't my cup of tea.
2
I hate the term "Quadruple-A". The entire point of Triple-A was to be the biggest of the big. There's no cap on that size.
27What if we took the A's yeah? What if we took the A's - to eleven?
1
Sure it is, Yves. If any game would qualify as quadruple A it's the Black Flag spinoff that's been in development hell for years. Genuinely curious how long this game lasts, even if it does get good reviews and finds an audience. Feels like Ubisoft would have cancelled this ages ago if the government of Singapore hadn't been providing subsidies to help fund the project.
23It would be great if it was a black flag spinoff. A single player pirate action rpg. But nooo. It has to be a live service multiplayer game without any soul
6Yves is a douche canoe.
5It's not even a subsidies thing so much as they are legally obligated to release a game for Singapore
3
The 4th A is for "Assholes"
21Doesn't the fourth A overflow and actually make it a 00F tier game?
20Their AAA games are mid so I suspect their 'quadruple-A' games are also mid. Price 'em how you want, I'll pass anyway, thanks Yves.
19There’s plenty of other comments ragging Ubisoft for their anti-consumer business practices so let me just point to those as a preamble and say “what they said”
… HOWEVER I remember someone on Youtube, maybe SirSwag, saying something years ago that rings true about Skull and Bones. For a big company, they’re taking notable risks by investing so heavily in unique multiplayer games. Basically every other big budget multiplayer game I’ve seen has been trying to compete with Call of Duty or Fortnite by being functionally the same thing with minor differences.
Splinter Cell: Blacklist, Rainbow Six Siege, For Honor, Shootmania Storm, Riders Republic, and Skull and Bones, are not like most other games that come before. Yes, Ubisoft is a massive corporation and fuck that noise, but as a consumer of video games I appreciate that they are at least putting a good amount of the money they trick people into spending into studios with designers and developers who have creative minds and they’re supporting that creativity. Games like For Honor and Rainbow Six Siege can’t come from indie teams with no funding.
17Sirswag is easily the single most underrated creator on that platform.
3I have definitely enjoyed their tactic of doing smaller Far Cry games to test out new ideas, both with settings and game systems. It's very incremental and nothing too crazy, at least for the game systems, but it is nice to see.
On the other hand this experimentation comes around a solid core of what I like to call the Übigame, with a huge expansive map choke full of points of interest, strong points to take over, larger zones to unlock through story beats, and great traversal options through it all, etc. I don't see much difference between the Far Cry, the AC series, revent Ghost Recon, etc. Pandora fits right in there, too, so much so I'm surprised it's not officially an FC game.
Point is : is this one going to be an Übigame or not?
2
Cant remember the last "AAA" game i enjoyed.
16Your not supposed to enjoy them, you pay so the shareholders get to enjoy them.
13God of Wars and Hitman
5Hitman is almost always good! 🔥
0
Some Nintendo games are pretty decent, even just over the last year. Super Mario Wonder, Tears of the Kingdom (I didn't personally play this one, need to!), and Pikmin 4. As well as some remasters in there, like Metroid Prime. It's been a good mix of AAA and a lot of indie on Nintendo Switch!
1Cyberpunk 2077, witcher 3, and Elden ring for me.
1
I won't buy another Ubisoft game after the nft shit and them deleting old accounts with purchased games.
16Quadruple the reasons not to buy it.
16I was excited when they first showed this game.
Now I wish it had either been delayed again or outright cancelled. Not that they legally could have, but to release this and not admit that its a massive L is just sad at this point.
Im not looking down at Ubisoft anymore. Now I just feel pity. This is literally begging.
15Doesn’t matter to me, I ain’t playing this shit.
13Quadruple Ass
12Leave it to Ubisoft to find new and inventive ways to fuck up. They really do lead the industry in making shitty decisions, setting a firm example for other companies in exactly what trends won't be popular. Bravo.
10At this point I wonder if there are some internal politics that want this project to fail and be over. 70 price tag, live service but only on ubisoft platform, ignoring the most demanded features, etc.
It's like they are tired of a project that was a money black hole for years and they just want to pull the plug.
9“Kotaku’s report claimed that the studio made a deal with the local government that requires Ubisoft Singapore to launch an original game within the next few years. In short: the studio may be legally required to deliver Skull and Bones. When IGN asked if this is true, Ubisoft declined to comment.”
So they have to launch the game, the $70 is to cover the dev costs (even during the reboots, they were not allowed to pare down or reassign any of the ~500 staff), I predict we then see it all crumble and Ubisoft walk away having fulfilled their misguided obligations. I don’t know if we know the specifics of what they got from the government of Singapore, but it’s money. What a shambles.
1
Aw man I was kinda looking forward to this but this reminds me it's Ubisoft. Which is a shame because I'm a sucker for their open world formula.
7Don't get too excited early impression say it isn't good.
3No surprise there :(
2
So you get an extra A for every 2 years of development, is that how it works?
7Bwahahahahaaa. No.
6What happened to the records industry? Mp3 Videogames companies so many years ago have totally overpriced values. Do you know how much is 70 for a poor or even half developed country? And the word population almost totally majority are that people .
5Double Plus Good
4I'll wait for initial reviews to form my opinions of the game. I'll also wait for a price cut if I ever decide to get it.
3You can't even do that these days. Some games are released like cyberpunk 0277, then a couple years later they're awesome. Some games release and add in bullshit later. Ubisoft would not surprise me here.
Immortal Phoenix rising was the last Ubisoft game I bought and I didn't realize it was Ubisoft at the time. I was immediately reminded why I didn't like Ubisoft. I bought it on switch, it forces an account creation and login to play local. It's on a switch, you bloody morons, if I'm on an airplane I'm not going to want to go through a damn connect to online services song and dance. It's also a single player game, so...
In the end I found a workaround. Because you can't have airplane mode enabled to play switch docked, I had to enter the game in handheld mode with airplane mode on, go through the song and dance about being unable to connect, then dock my switch and disable airplane mode. Like what the fuck? Just let me play the damn game I paid for.
Fuck Ubisoft. Terrible studio.
2
Can they stop making things up. MOre aaaassssss
2Guess what the extra A stands for.
1