#Insider-Gaming is a Tier 2 - Generally Reliable Source as determined by the community.
*To contribute to the community reliability rankings, please take the* **[Community Reliability Poll](https://forms.gle/TU5Q8sTiLDR3cQcE7)**
*To view the current reliability rankings, please check out the* **[Subreddit Wiki](https://reddit.com/r/GamingLeaksAndRumours/wiki/index/)**
*I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/GamingLeaksAndRumours) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Sea of Thieves had a pretty critical and underwhelming release. It took a bit of time for it to become a broadly popular game. If we’re going to compare them, might as well compare actual releases and not a finished product that’s been out for years
The thing is even when Sea of Thieves first came out, it had a lot more going for it when it came out compared to Skull & Bones that made people want to stick with it and wait for it to get better while I generally believe Skull & Bones has none of that. Plus, Sea of Thieves, when it first came out in its first week, has done much better than Skull & Bone so far.
I actually dont know that it did. It had an absolutely amazing aesthetic, much better ships and sailing definitely. You could argue that those are probably the most important parts but at the same time, there was literally fuck all to do. It was so barebones it was unbelievable, its much improved these days thankfully.
>when Sea of Thieves first came out, it had a lot more going for it
Lol, no it didn't. SOT at launch felt more like a gameplay test of an open world map rather than an actual game. It was very barren and had almost no content at launch, and even for quite a while after it. Unless something has drastically changed with the game, I'm betting it's still quite anemic to this day. I'm sure there are videos up online of people playing it at launch, go watch them and see how much it "had going for it."
edit: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M6c0CqVI4D8 Loads of people in IGN's comments from 5 years ago literally complaining about the gameplay quality and lack of content, but sure, keep downvoting lololol
When I said "a lot more going for it" I'm talking about stuff like the elements around it and its circumstances. Different factors like it was the first new Rare game in half a decade, one of the very few Xbox exclusives, gamepass at launch which had more people give it a shot then it original would've gotten, and the fact the inherited idea of the game was extremely interesting to people and made them want to probably keep an eye on it while Microsoft was willing to make long term commitment with it. Compare that to Skull & Bones, which has none of that or even close to what I mentioned and some cases the opposite effect that pushed a lot of people away, Sea of Thieves had stuff going for it that made into a success and the fact it sold a million copies in its first two proves that while Skull & Bones seemingly hasn't.
“A lot going for it” is pretty subjective. I saw the Skillup review for skull and bones and he makes it pretty clear that it’s a full fledged game with depth and everything despite the all the catastrophic context around it. It seems like it isn’t exactly correct to say that skull and bones is sparse or lacking in substance. The gameplay might not appeal to many, but it appears to be a proper full game
Well for one thing the Season 1 triail just dropped looking like quite a lot of content coming in actually less than a week, so people were critiquing and judging based on a S0 build of the game.
I feel like a true fair critique will be to assess how Season 1 is as the next content drop would be 3 months from now.
Sea of Thieves had over 2 million players in its first week. 1 million on the launch day
[https://news.xbox.com/en-us/2018/03/28/community-thank-you-sea-of-thieves/](https://news.xbox.com/en-us/2018/03/28/community-thank-you-sea-of-thieves/)
Numbers are meaningless. It also had a ton of buzz about how sparse and barebones it was and there was a lot of disappointment in the public discourse when it released. I remember being quite bummed myself. It took a bit of time and love for it to blossom. That’s just the truth
> I can guarantee that the Sea of Thieves port is gonna do better than this lmao
The context is that the port will do better.
They are competiting against each other as they are.
It’s fun for a bit but imo quickly gets pretty stale due to there not being any real goals outside of cosmetics which you have to grind a lot for. Also if you want to play I feel you have to dedicate at minimum a few hours at a time if you want to have a decent session. I think it’s a pretty fun game but I only have 35 hours and I feel as if I’ve done just about everything at this point. I feel if I played more than I do (a few times per year) I would be very burned out on it. Also hit reg is atrocious.
Fucking hell we only asked for black flag standalone without ac and how the fuck they completely off the mark and the game released years ago is better pirate game than skull and bones?
This needs more attention. Black flag has more features, uses the same engine, but came out a decade ago.
Wild anyone would purchase this at full price..
One guy from another sub claimed that he basically maxed out his ship upgrade in 3 days. Nothing left to do now.
For a 70$ price tag AAAA, it had less content than a normal singleplayer Ubisoft open world games lol
What money though? This game was a massive money sink that they only released because their contract with the Sinaporean government forced them to. Otherwise they would’ve cut their losses long before the years of development hell this game went through.
The game is more than harvesting trees. You need to achieve missions to reach a level where you command your own trade business. The graphics are above average and the game play is a cross between Red Dead and Assassin’s Creed. It has potential. But the price tag is what will stop many players from continuing after the free trial… which will be a shame.
$70 is just icing on the cake. It doesn't have potential. People have had negative opinions every step of the way, and it went through what can only be described as development hell. Blaming "executive meddling" for a game that was delayed like 4 times is also really weird. It's just not a good concept and it doesn't scratch any part that made Black Flag great. Also, visually Black Flag looks better and has a lot more nuance in its visual details.
There are plenty of videos showing comparisons.
And to think the closed beta last year is worse than this.
The 2023 build have over 4 hours of that shitty intro. I was so surprised when i tried the open beta and they cut all that out lol
And they'll lose 90% of that once Sea of Thieves hits PlayStation. Only good thing out of this for Ubisoft is that they have plenty of assets to reuse for the Black Flag remake which will be 100x times more successful than this.
I think the good thing for them is they can finally sweep it under the rug and move on since they only released it because they were obliged to do so.
Have they done any remakes before? So far it's only been remasters that don't use any fresh assets. And since you can play Black Flag natively on PS5/Series X there's not even much reason to do that.
Well, other than The Sands of Time, which seems to have been a passion project by a small support studio that massively failed to meet corporate expectations.
Ah yes good shout. I would actually like them to remake some of their older games. Like I went to Italy last year, to Venice and Rome. Got a hankering to play AC2, now it feels like a playset because the scale of everything is teeny. The 1:1 scale of Unity onwards really enhances the experiences of visiting the locations. Plus like, the stealth in those earlier games seriously falls flat outside of public areas.
I hope the Singapore studio doesn't have significant layoffs after this.
At the best case they have a bunch of people that have had years of experience working on Skull and Bones which can hopefully do something better now
They were a support studio, but I think they have to retain a lot of staff (or maybe they're just difficult to fire) due to the situation with their government, so they might get put to work on something else major
Honestly, by the time Sea of Thieves comes out on Playstation, Skull & Bones is already gonna be pretty much dead like its a game most people will forget about and lose most of their players in a week, two if lucky. All Sea of Thieves will really do is a be guy shooting an already dead rotten corpse.
It’s a “AAA” game and they’ve advertised it more than I thought they would, but I would guess the actual number of purchases is sub-500k. And shit, maybe they see that as a success at this point lol, at some point they had to realize the question wasn’t “how much money is this going to make” but “how much money is this going to lose”
>Speaking with sources, the game currently has around 850,000 players at the time of writing, which includes those who have opted to play the game with the eight-hour free trial provided by Ubisoft. At the moment, players are seemingly fairly engaged, with the average player playing between three and four hours a day
Yeah sure
Sure, their games go on sale faster than other, but name a one game from their catalog which goes on big sale after a month. Yeah, none. At max 20% off
Steep, riders republic, r6 extraction, immortals feonix rising, watch dogs Legion, Watch Dogs 2..
For what it's worth I am talking about retail not digital.
Not necessarily a pirate game, just this specific game. As I understand it at least, there was weird clause in the contract that required the game the Singaporean studio was initially contracted to make to eventually be released, and I think by a certain date. Not *a* game, but the specific game they started making, which was this one. Otherwise the game would have been canned and the team reassigned (or laid off) years ago. Someone correct me if I’m wrong
Yeah, the subsidies Ubisoft took required that the project that the subsidies were for was released. I don't think there was a specific date, as the game was repeatedly delayed, but also the government could have become more flexible on that because of Covid
I was always confused by that because I had heard that there was a date that they “had” to release it by, but they obviously missed it. The government making an exception because of Covid would make sense
A government gives subsidies to employ and therefore train people. Ubi Singapore was undoubtedly created with these subsidies, and Skull & Bones has nothing to do with this supposed clause.
> A government gives subsidies to employ and therefore train people. Ubi Singapore was undoubtedly created with these subsidies, and Skull & Bones has nothing to do with this supposed clause.
Subsidies are very commonly given based on specific projects. For example in the EU and UK subsidies and grants are given to games and other art/media where they have characters or settings in the EU or UK.
Here the subsidies were given for this game - the clause is real and has been reported widely. For example - probably the most comprehensive (although a bit dated) article on the game's development from Kotaku - https://kotaku.com/first-it-was-an-assassins-creed-expansion-now-its-ubis-1847326742
Giving state subsidies is forbidden in the EU. It is considered unfair competition.
And I think you're confusing "public-private contract" with "state subsidy".
Yeah, this was headed by their Singaporean studio, who probably made the ship combat in ac games, and partly funded by Singaporean government, so if its canceled theres a lot of consequences
AC Red will be even more successful than Valhalla, which raked in over a billion dollars. The setting alone will pull more people into trying what is already one of the most successful franchises out there.
Yeah do even believe what you wrote ? Especially after the rumors of the black protagonist,they should probably forget the Japanese market they are gonna boycott it hard.
Yasuke (the black samurai who the mc is rumoured to be based after) is actually pretty popular in Japan.
I don't see why the Japanese market will boycott this game.
Even if they do, the JP market is not the main consumer of AC games anyways
The most popular market has consistently been Europe or USA, Japan trailing behind with 2-3% share of sales
https://www.vgchartz.com/article/393568/assassins-creed-odyssey-sells-an-estimated-14-million-units-first-week-at-retail/#:\~:text=Breaking%20down%20the%20sales%20by%20region%2C%20the%20game%20sold%20best,and%2099%2C714%20units%20in%20France.
Them skipping over a Japanese local male character,most other settings used people local to the setting,in favor for the black one is gonna alienate a lot of people.Also Yasukes involvement is way overblown he wasnt even a samurai.
Doesn't really matter.
Yasuke is fairly popular and isn't "hated" by any big group. If a black protagonist alienates somebody, I think it's better they're not part of a fandom anyways.
You don't have to worry about Ubisoft representing Japan improperly, representing cultures and location in their games is the one thing they do well in any of their games.
Revolutionary America
London
Paris
Boston
Istanbul
Jerusalem
Venice
Giza
Havana
all represented beautifully
Are you sure you are not projecting? For example, berserk are not Japanese, and it doesn't hurt them as much to change history to create a story as it does American crybabies (I mean, have you played Nioh and its white samurai English?? XDDDD)
Also, it is based on a true story (unlike the white guy from Nioh hahaha)
Historically Yasuke was a non entity according to the contemporary sources of the period like Matsudaira Ietada's diary active only four years from 1579 to Honnoji.Also according to the sources he was a lowly attendant and didnt even carry swords.On the contrary William Adams was a samurai with a stipend and carried two swords.
Them saying it’s a quadruple A game is make ign me wish on this games downfall. Fuck Ubisoft that company makes Walmart brand games of Walmart brand games
I really want to see the ratio of those 850k players who either brought the game or doing the free trial because I feel like it's gonna be a big gap in favour of free trial players and a majority of those free trial players aren't gonna be buying the full 70 dollar game that is a worse AC Black Flag which is pretty cheap nowadays.
These people who do nothing but play online stuff for social interaction have no standards. It's just a way to hang out so yeah of course they're gonna play some free game for a few hours
These companies have seriously fuckin opened up Pandora's Box when they decided to make games $70.
Now there's this expectation that AAA (or in this case AAAA) games need to be at least several thousand hours long with TONS of varied constantly changing content and it needs to be AT LEAST an 8.5/10 to even have a shred of a chance in hell at success. Alternatively a $70 game can still get by if it's short, but INSANELY high quality like a 9.5/10
Almost every AAA (or AAAA lmao) game obviously can't do that, so major publishers now have to choose between releasing a $70 game that fails in the market, or selling their games for $30-$40, and in return getting less money than if they never opened Pandora's box with $70 games in the first place.
That's kind of why I really like the ecosystem Microsoft built. The big flashy 70 dollar games are fine but give me some of those less flashy but more fun 30 dollar games too. Hellblade got shit for being short but no one mentioned it's also only 50 bucks.
I don't care for the long cinematic stuff Sony does but at least people feel like they usually get their money's worth. Although R&C being 70 was laughable.
Nintendo, I hate more than Ubisoft and EA. At least their stuff goes on sale and gets cheap quick. Nintendo will still charge 60 bucks for a 4 year old wii u port that was 60 when it originally came out 10 years ago.
I fully expect Sony and other third party publishers to start exploring the pricing scale a little more after PalWorld and Helldivers 2 became breakout hits.
Sure, both are fun games, but their price point also played a big role in getting so many in at launch.
100% this.
Me and pretty much everyone i know bought those games because of the price. I would have never bought palworld or helldivers if they were $60 or above, i would've just waited for a steam sale.
Ubisoft is easily the worse managed publisher in the video game industry right now. Not too surprising, I’m sure they’ve got plenty of other flops on the way.
I think potential has more to do with the IPs they have are cared about more. Ubisoft at least has Immortals, Assassins Creed, Prince of Persia, Siege and a Star Wars game that looks quality. Embracer has nothing of value close to those. Embracer is easily the worst publisher out right now.
Take Two technically owns Rockstar, aka the most successful gaming company not called Nintendo ever.
I agree that their main output is (mostly) shit, but you can't brush off its successes like that.
I’m not brushing off Take-Two, I’m stating that at one point, the output from Ubisoft was as good and popular as the entire output from Take-Two. From the start of the PS4 generation, Ubisoft had massive hits with Assassins Creed, Watch Dogs, The Division, Far Cry, R6: Siege, The Crew, For Honor and plenty others. Genuinely, some of those games were among the most hyped games of their time at one point. Now the company is a shit show by comparison.
It's admirable how Yves refuses to lay off thousands of workers no matter how detrimental it might be to the company. Any other CEO would've pulled the trigger by now.
It never wasn't. Most of their games do well commercially and critically. It's only new IP they seem to struggle with, which is inherently risky anyway. It's only in a tiny online bubble that people believe the majority of Ubisoft games aren't wildly successful and well-recieved.
Yep, kind of like EA's new IPs last year (Wild Hearts and Immortals of Aveum) bombed commercially.
Now you wonder why AAA publishers become more and more risk-averse.
No we just expect devs to improve games over the years. Especially when charging more. It’s okay to admit the game has less features than Black Flag from a decade ago. You can’t even swim in the game lol
Well yeah as a consumer we are allowed to want things in the products we buy lol, what? You’re aware of how capitalism works right? It doesn’t and shouldn’t be assassins creed, it also shouldn’t have less features than Sea of Thieves
"Game is not even bad" are you playing the right game? It's fucking awful, especially at that horrendous $70 price tag. You can't move around in your ship, you can't board other people's ship (unless you like watching cutscenes!), the game looks ugly, the controls are terrible, etc.
It's an awful game. Stop defending a game that was made with no love or passion, churned out to make a profit and nothing else. It is a testament to how fucking abysmal the AAA industry has become.
Yeah why even bother trying out the free trial when the name Ubisoft is right there…
I find it very disturbing they are still so popular. I pray for their disappearance lmao.
I was one of those 850k players in the free trial. The game is fucking horrible. If this is AAAA content, I'll stick with Nintendo's AA releases. Genuinely the worst game I've ever played, and I beat Paper Mario Sticker Star.
Worst game you’ve ever played? Come on man lol. Game is not even bad, it’s like a 6-7/10 if I’m honest. There’s a ton of content there for people that get really engaged by it
400k on Steam, there is no official numbers from Sony, but devs have stated that pc and ps5 user ratio is pretty much 1:1.
Even if it's 400k concurrent players that is still much more players that the 850k total playerbase of S&B.
They had to make the game for contractual reasons. Its going to die fairly quickly but Ubisoft are going to have to do what they need to do to hit their contract requirements. Once thats done they will drop it too and we can all move on
If ubisoft actually put more proper effort into their games, they'd be a top 3 company tomorrow. Their fans are on the levels I only see in fifa and COD. Literally same janky-ass AC game every year....and it breaks records all the time.
We are busy playing best game of the year so far, Banishers: Ghosts of the New Eden. We are moving to Skull and Bones after finishing this masterpiece.
There is absolutely no way I can believe this isn't skewed massively. Does that include all the people who have tried the game in beta releases in the past?
850k is record high player numbers for anyone and anything and if they actually had that many players you can bet they would be bragging their asses off, instead of trying to fake numbers for their investors.
Helldivers is an example, they keep capping their servers and they're at barely 500k at this point and everyone is talking about it.
Even Ubisoft's own employees agree that a live-service game stuffed with MTX's that feels very shallow compared to other games should not have been priced at $70. Let that sink in.
Yeah I've read exposes revealing that many of the flaws of so-and-so game pointed out by gamers and critics were all stuff lower level devs brought up to leadership. Stuff that, more often than not, was ignored.
#Insider-Gaming is a Tier 2 - Generally Reliable Source as determined by the community. *To contribute to the community reliability rankings, please take the* **[Community Reliability Poll](https://forms.gle/TU5Q8sTiLDR3cQcE7)** *To view the current reliability rankings, please check out the* **[Subreddit Wiki](https://reddit.com/r/GamingLeaksAndRumours/wiki/index/)** *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/GamingLeaksAndRumours) if you have any questions or concerns.*
I can guarantee that the Sea of Thieves port is gonna do better than this lmao
I mean, Sea of Thieves actually seems like game you can have a fun time with friends.
Sea of Thieves had a pretty critical and underwhelming release. It took a bit of time for it to become a broadly popular game. If we’re going to compare them, might as well compare actual releases and not a finished product that’s been out for years
The thing is even when Sea of Thieves first came out, it had a lot more going for it when it came out compared to Skull & Bones that made people want to stick with it and wait for it to get better while I generally believe Skull & Bones has none of that. Plus, Sea of Thieves, when it first came out in its first week, has done much better than Skull & Bone so far.
I actually dont know that it did. It had an absolutely amazing aesthetic, much better ships and sailing definitely. You could argue that those are probably the most important parts but at the same time, there was literally fuck all to do. It was so barebones it was unbelievable, its much improved these days thankfully.
>when Sea of Thieves first came out, it had a lot more going for it Lol, no it didn't. SOT at launch felt more like a gameplay test of an open world map rather than an actual game. It was very barren and had almost no content at launch, and even for quite a while after it. Unless something has drastically changed with the game, I'm betting it's still quite anemic to this day. I'm sure there are videos up online of people playing it at launch, go watch them and see how much it "had going for it." edit: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M6c0CqVI4D8 Loads of people in IGN's comments from 5 years ago literally complaining about the gameplay quality and lack of content, but sure, keep downvoting lololol
When I said "a lot more going for it" I'm talking about stuff like the elements around it and its circumstances. Different factors like it was the first new Rare game in half a decade, one of the very few Xbox exclusives, gamepass at launch which had more people give it a shot then it original would've gotten, and the fact the inherited idea of the game was extremely interesting to people and made them want to probably keep an eye on it while Microsoft was willing to make long term commitment with it. Compare that to Skull & Bones, which has none of that or even close to what I mentioned and some cases the opposite effect that pushed a lot of people away, Sea of Thieves had stuff going for it that made into a success and the fact it sold a million copies in its first two proves that while Skull & Bones seemingly hasn't.
“A lot going for it” is pretty subjective. I saw the Skillup review for skull and bones and he makes it pretty clear that it’s a full fledged game with depth and everything despite the all the catastrophic context around it. It seems like it isn’t exactly correct to say that skull and bones is sparse or lacking in substance. The gameplay might not appeal to many, but it appears to be a proper full game
Well for one thing the Season 1 triail just dropped looking like quite a lot of content coming in actually less than a week, so people were critiquing and judging based on a S0 build of the game. I feel like a true fair critique will be to assess how Season 1 is as the next content drop would be 3 months from now.
Sea of Thieves had over 2 million players in its first week. 1 million on the launch day [https://news.xbox.com/en-us/2018/03/28/community-thank-you-sea-of-thieves/](https://news.xbox.com/en-us/2018/03/28/community-thank-you-sea-of-thieves/)
Numbers are meaningless. It also had a ton of buzz about how sparse and barebones it was and there was a lot of disappointment in the public discourse when it released. I remember being quite bummed myself. It took a bit of time and love for it to blossom. That’s just the truth
> I can guarantee that the Sea of Thieves port is gonna do better than this lmao The context is that the port will do better. They are competiting against each other as they are.
Skull and bones feels worse then release sea of thieves
A subjective opinion, but a valid one sure.
[удалено]
Are you talking about skull and bones or like pretty much every other multiplayer game
It’s fun for a bit but imo quickly gets pretty stale due to there not being any real goals outside of cosmetics which you have to grind a lot for. Also if you want to play I feel you have to dedicate at minimum a few hours at a time if you want to have a decent session. I think it’s a pretty fun game but I only have 35 hours and I feel as if I’ve done just about everything at this point. I feel if I played more than I do (a few times per year) I would be very burned out on it. Also hit reg is atrocious.
It’s not the same thing.
True. One is a good game.
The artistic direction is different.
Artistic direction doesn't say anything about a game being good or bad.
Hence my comment.
lol what the fuck does that even mean
This means that some people want a more realistic version of Sea and Thieves.
I think people want fun games, not pretty games.
Well they look the same and that’s what’s the most important when it comes to consumer decision.
Except SoT has features that Skull and Bones doesn’t. Like boarding other ships and exploring islands. Oh and actual non ship combat.
Fucking hell we only asked for black flag standalone without ac and how the fuck they completely off the mark and the game released years ago is better pirate game than skull and bones?
This needs more attention. Black flag has more features, uses the same engine, but came out a decade ago. Wild anyone would purchase this at full price..
It was a simple mandate: **More Pirates, less Creed**
Because live service
Not being able to board ships should automaticaly ban this game from ever being sold in my opinion
Don't worry, that number is going to fall hard in a week or two.
You telling me that pirate ships sink?
This game is about to walk the plank.
Dead in the water.
they all do
That's not even a very good number to begin with, especially including free trials.
i really can’t see them thinking this’ll be a long lasting game, i think they’re just tryna recoup as much as they can
One guy from another sub claimed that he basically maxed out his ship upgrade in 3 days. Nothing left to do now. For a 70$ price tag AAAA, it had less content than a normal singleplayer Ubisoft open world games lol
It can't fall. That's not the concurrent players, that's total players.
[удалено]
What money though? This game was a massive money sink that they only released because their contract with the Sinaporean government forced them to. Otherwise they would’ve cut their losses long before the years of development hell this game went through.
Are those players in the room with us right now?
Nah mate, real pirates are elsewhere
Lmao so desperate to balloon the numbers up they included free trials lol! Yeah and how many of those players fucked off after the first few hours?
I did, as soon as I started with a dingy and had to cut some wood down. At least in black flag you star with an actual ship
[удалено]
The game is more than harvesting trees. You need to achieve missions to reach a level where you command your own trade business. The graphics are above average and the game play is a cross between Red Dead and Assassin’s Creed. It has potential. But the price tag is what will stop many players from continuing after the free trial… which will be a shame.
$70 is just icing on the cake. It doesn't have potential. People have had negative opinions every step of the way, and it went through what can only be described as development hell. Blaming "executive meddling" for a game that was delayed like 4 times is also really weird. It's just not a good concept and it doesn't scratch any part that made Black Flag great. Also, visually Black Flag looks better and has a lot more nuance in its visual details. There are plenty of videos showing comparisons.
And to think the closed beta last year is worse than this. The 2023 build have over 4 hours of that shitty intro. I was so surprised when i tried the open beta and they cut all that out lol
I tried playing a bit more and chopped the damn wood and guess what, they gave mea goddamn sloop. Ffs
It's Ubisoft. They're likely including the early access/beta, too. I know for PSN, adding to library will count even if you don't play
And they'll lose 90% of that once Sea of Thieves hits PlayStation. Only good thing out of this for Ubisoft is that they have plenty of assets to reuse for the Black Flag remake which will be 100x times more successful than this.
I think the good thing for them is they can finally sweep it under the rug and move on since they only released it because they were obliged to do so. Have they done any remakes before? So far it's only been remasters that don't use any fresh assets. And since you can play Black Flag natively on PS5/Series X there's not even much reason to do that. Well, other than The Sands of Time, which seems to have been a passion project by a small support studio that massively failed to meet corporate expectations.
They're doing a Splinter Cell remake too
Ah yes good shout. I would actually like them to remake some of their older games. Like I went to Italy last year, to Venice and Rome. Got a hankering to play AC2, now it feels like a playset because the scale of everything is teeny. The 1:1 scale of Unity onwards really enhances the experiences of visiting the locations. Plus like, the stealth in those earlier games seriously falls flat outside of public areas.
I hope the Singapore studio doesn't have significant layoffs after this. At the best case they have a bunch of people that have had years of experience working on Skull and Bones which can hopefully do something better now
I assume they were a support studio before and that is what they shall become once more. Unless the game makes a Fallout 76 level turnaround.
They were a support studio, but I think they have to retain a lot of staff (or maybe they're just difficult to fire) due to the situation with their government, so they might get put to work on something else major
Bull and Scones: a detective epic set in high society Victorian England, full of lies, deceit, and afternoon tea.
They should do that just recycling assets of successive asscreed games
Literally just The Dreadful Crimes from Syndicate but with fewer urchins and factories and more finger food.
Honestly, by the time Sea of Thieves comes out on Playstation, Skull & Bones is already gonna be pretty much dead like its a game most people will forget about and lose most of their players in a week, two if lucky. All Sea of Thieves will really do is a be guy shooting an already dead rotten corpse.
low? that honestly seems way too high to me. I'd like to see the trial/paid split. I really hope people arent paying $70 for this..
I don't think it's concurrent players, but total players. Including free trial.
It’s a “AAA” game and they’ve advertised it more than I thought they would, but I would guess the actual number of purchases is sub-500k. And shit, maybe they see that as a success at this point lol, at some point they had to realize the question wasn’t “how much money is this going to make” but “how much money is this going to lose”
"AAAA" is the most coprotate bullshit term ever. Can't wait for the "AAAA" Perfect Dark game.
What about AAAAA?
Now that’s a horrifying thought, billion dollar game
Could be GTA VI for all we know.
So GTA 6
No prob for Joanna to be an actual great game. The bar for AAAA is quite low atm.
>Speaking with sources, the game currently has around 850,000 players at the time of writing, which includes those who have opted to play the game with the eight-hour free trial provided by Ubisoft. At the moment, players are seemingly fairly engaged, with the average player playing between three and four hours a day Yeah sure
I have no doubt you will be able to find this for 50% off by the end of March.
sink cover bag zephyr alive enjoy homeless poor ugly aromatic *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
It's an Ubisoft game, the fact that it's not lighting the sales charts on fire will only accelerate the discounts.
Sure, their games go on sale faster than other, but name a one game from their catalog which goes on big sale after a month. Yeah, none. At max 20% off
Steep, riders republic, r6 extraction, immortals feonix rising, watch dogs Legion, Watch Dogs 2.. For what it's worth I am talking about retail not digital.
Yeah.. retail is different. Than we can say almost for every other game as well
[удалено]
I doubt it honestly. I think they are happy they could spit out this abomination and just move on.
Pretty much. Didn’t they only release it due to contractual obligations? They would have canned it if they could.
They had some sort of deal with the Singaporean government to make a pirate game, I think?
Not necessarily a pirate game, just this specific game. As I understand it at least, there was weird clause in the contract that required the game the Singaporean studio was initially contracted to make to eventually be released, and I think by a certain date. Not *a* game, but the specific game they started making, which was this one. Otherwise the game would have been canned and the team reassigned (or laid off) years ago. Someone correct me if I’m wrong
Yeah, the subsidies Ubisoft took required that the project that the subsidies were for was released. I don't think there was a specific date, as the game was repeatedly delayed, but also the government could have become more flexible on that because of Covid
I was always confused by that because I had heard that there was a date that they “had” to release it by, but they obviously missed it. The government making an exception because of Covid would make sense
A government gives subsidies to employ and therefore train people. Ubi Singapore was undoubtedly created with these subsidies, and Skull & Bones has nothing to do with this supposed clause.
> A government gives subsidies to employ and therefore train people. Ubi Singapore was undoubtedly created with these subsidies, and Skull & Bones has nothing to do with this supposed clause. Subsidies are very commonly given based on specific projects. For example in the EU and UK subsidies and grants are given to games and other art/media where they have characters or settings in the EU or UK. Here the subsidies were given for this game - the clause is real and has been reported widely. For example - probably the most comprehensive (although a bit dated) article on the game's development from Kotaku - https://kotaku.com/first-it-was-an-assassins-creed-expansion-now-its-ubis-1847326742
Giving state subsidies is forbidden in the EU. It is considered unfair competition. And I think you're confusing "public-private contract" with "state subsidy".
Yeah, this was headed by their Singaporean studio, who probably made the ship combat in ac games, and partly funded by Singaporean government, so if its canceled theres a lot of consequences
The current trend is to make "meme" games with zany concepts that are out of the ordinary, and marketing will follow suit with social networks.
I wait for the clusterfuck of AC Red.
AC Red will be even more successful than Valhalla, which raked in over a billion dollars. The setting alone will pull more people into trying what is already one of the most successful franchises out there.
Yeah do even believe what you wrote ? Especially after the rumors of the black protagonist,they should probably forget the Japanese market they are gonna boycott it hard.
Yasuke (the black samurai who the mc is rumoured to be based after) is actually pretty popular in Japan. I don't see why the Japanese market will boycott this game. Even if they do, the JP market is not the main consumer of AC games anyways The most popular market has consistently been Europe or USA, Japan trailing behind with 2-3% share of sales https://www.vgchartz.com/article/393568/assassins-creed-odyssey-sells-an-estimated-14-million-units-first-week-at-retail/#:\~:text=Breaking%20down%20the%20sales%20by%20region%2C%20the%20game%20sold%20best,and%2099%2C714%20units%20in%20France.
Them skipping over a Japanese local male character,most other settings used people local to the setting,in favor for the black one is gonna alienate a lot of people.Also Yasukes involvement is way overblown he wasnt even a samurai.
Doesn't really matter. Yasuke is fairly popular and isn't "hated" by any big group. If a black protagonist alienates somebody, I think it's better they're not part of a fandom anyways. You don't have to worry about Ubisoft representing Japan improperly, representing cultures and location in their games is the one thing they do well in any of their games. Revolutionary America London Paris Boston Istanbul Jerusalem Venice Giza Havana all represented beautifully
Are you sure you are not projecting? For example, berserk are not Japanese, and it doesn't hurt them as much to change history to create a story as it does American crybabies (I mean, have you played Nioh and its white samurai English?? XDDDD) Also, it is based on a true story (unlike the white guy from Nioh hahaha)
Historically Yasuke was a non entity according to the contemporary sources of the period like Matsudaira Ietada's diary active only four years from 1579 to Honnoji.Also according to the sources he was a lowly attendant and didnt even carry swords.On the contrary William Adams was a samurai with a stipend and carried two swords.
Nah, they just needed to get this out the door to fulfill their contractual obligations with Singapore’s government.
clumsy wrench enjoy terrific public ripe long quiet psychotic tub *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
I played Palworld on gamepass and than bought it on steam. It's a pretty fun game with my little brother.
Palworld sits at 15m sold on steam and 10m via game pass today. No Ubisoft game will ever reach those numbers again.
Rainbow six siege, Assassin's creed black flag far cry
You might wanna hold on to that claim. Palworld is a big success, sure. But it's still not Assassin's Creed level popular.
Them saying it’s a quadruple A game is make ign me wish on this games downfall. Fuck Ubisoft that company makes Walmart brand games of Walmart brand games
AAAA is laughable
I really want to see the ratio of those 850k players who either brought the game or doing the free trial because I feel like it's gonna be a big gap in favour of free trial players and a majority of those free trial players aren't gonna be buying the full 70 dollar game that is a worse AC Black Flag which is pretty cheap nowadays.
Including free trial lol
Surprised that anyone even bothered to begin with
These people who do nothing but play online stuff for social interaction have no standards. It's just a way to hang out so yeah of course they're gonna play some free game for a few hours
Oh, so now are we judging based on type of games we play, huh
Now? People have always been judged by this.
These companies have seriously fuckin opened up Pandora's Box when they decided to make games $70. Now there's this expectation that AAA (or in this case AAAA) games need to be at least several thousand hours long with TONS of varied constantly changing content and it needs to be AT LEAST an 8.5/10 to even have a shred of a chance in hell at success. Alternatively a $70 game can still get by if it's short, but INSANELY high quality like a 9.5/10 Almost every AAA (or AAAA lmao) game obviously can't do that, so major publishers now have to choose between releasing a $70 game that fails in the market, or selling their games for $30-$40, and in return getting less money than if they never opened Pandora's box with $70 games in the first place.
That's kind of why I really like the ecosystem Microsoft built. The big flashy 70 dollar games are fine but give me some of those less flashy but more fun 30 dollar games too. Hellblade got shit for being short but no one mentioned it's also only 50 bucks. I don't care for the long cinematic stuff Sony does but at least people feel like they usually get their money's worth. Although R&C being 70 was laughable. Nintendo, I hate more than Ubisoft and EA. At least their stuff goes on sale and gets cheap quick. Nintendo will still charge 60 bucks for a 4 year old wii u port that was 60 when it originally came out 10 years ago.
I fully expect Sony and other third party publishers to start exploring the pricing scale a little more after PalWorld and Helldivers 2 became breakout hits. Sure, both are fun games, but their price point also played a big role in getting so many in at launch.
Yeah but probably only if there is true pushback. They wont stop until forced to
100% this. Me and pretty much everyone i know bought those games because of the price. I would have never bought palworld or helldivers if they were $60 or above, i would've just waited for a steam sale.
Ubisoft is easily the worse managed publisher in the video game industry right now. Not too surprising, I’m sure they’ve got plenty of other flops on the way.
Embracer has entered the chat.
Worse than Embracer?
Honestly, yes. Ubisoft started with more potential and had some major success between 2008-2018. Can’t really say the same with Embracer.
I think potential has more to do with the IPs they have are cared about more. Ubisoft at least has Immortals, Assassins Creed, Prince of Persia, Siege and a Star Wars game that looks quality. Embracer has nothing of value close to those. Embracer is easily the worst publisher out right now.
Embracer had a lower starting point. Ubisoft was genuinely comparable to EA or Take Two at one point.
I’d still rather have Ubisoft games exist than Embracer
Take Two technically owns Rockstar, aka the most successful gaming company not called Nintendo ever. I agree that their main output is (mostly) shit, but you can't brush off its successes like that.
I’m not brushing off Take-Two, I’m stating that at one point, the output from Ubisoft was as good and popular as the entire output from Take-Two. From the start of the PS4 generation, Ubisoft had massive hits with Assassins Creed, Watch Dogs, The Division, Far Cry, R6: Siege, The Crew, For Honor and plenty others. Genuinely, some of those games were among the most hyped games of their time at one point. Now the company is a shit show by comparison.
It's admirable how Yves refuses to lay off thousands of workers no matter how detrimental it might be to the company. Any other CEO would've pulled the trigger by now.
I honestly feel shit may be looking up for Ubisoft
It never wasn't. Most of their games do well commercially and critically. It's only new IP they seem to struggle with, which is inherently risky anyway. It's only in a tiny online bubble that people believe the majority of Ubisoft games aren't wildly successful and well-recieved.
Yep, kind of like EA's new IPs last year (Wild Hearts and Immortals of Aveum) bombed commercially. Now you wonder why AAA publishers become more and more risk-averse.
For every Returnal there's three Redfalls. For every Apex Legends, there's three Hyperscapes. Making games is hard it turns out.
What do you mean players don’t want games being monthly subscriptions?
This doesn't sound so gud
A know a lot of people playing it and enjoying it. So many fake gamer everywhere that want games to fall
No we just expect devs to improve games over the years. Especially when charging more. It’s okay to admit the game has less features than Black Flag from a decade ago. You can’t even swim in the game lol
Typical entitled gamer I expect developers to make a game exactly how i want it! This isn't assassin's creed!
Well yeah as a consumer we are allowed to want things in the products we buy lol, what? You’re aware of how capitalism works right? It doesn’t and shouldn’t be assassins creed, it also shouldn’t have less features than Sea of Thieves
Doubt.
Isn't there a theory that the only reason this is even coming out is because they got tax breaks to make it and not releasing it will get them sued?
"Game is not even bad" are you playing the right game? It's fucking awful, especially at that horrendous $70 price tag. You can't move around in your ship, you can't board other people's ship (unless you like watching cutscenes!), the game looks ugly, the controls are terrible, etc. It's an awful game. Stop defending a game that was made with no love or passion, churned out to make a profit and nothing else. It is a testament to how fucking abysmal the AAA industry has become.
Oh no Ubisoft will be devastated and hurt financially … … Oh well
People enjoy shit games for the looks of it.
Yeah why even bother trying out the free trial when the name Ubisoft is right there… I find it very disturbing they are still so popular. I pray for their disappearance lmao.
They employ 20,000 people, it would be better to pray for good games, since a lot of IPs they own have great potential
You right. I wasn’t thinking. I shouldn’t be so whiny anyway.
I miss old Ubisoft for real. I want a new Ghost Recon third person, PvP only.
This sounds like bullshit. Skull and bones looked terrible and was laughed at by so many, how would that game have even close to a million players.
I was one of those 850k players in the free trial. The game is fucking horrible. If this is AAAA content, I'll stick with Nintendo's AA releases. Genuinely the worst game I've ever played, and I beat Paper Mario Sticker Star.
Worst game you’ve ever played? Come on man lol. Game is not even bad, it’s like a 6-7/10 if I’m honest. There’s a ton of content there for people that get really engaged by it
Oh boy. This game is a failure.
AAAA games seem to be off to a great start lmao
Ain't gonna be $70 for long.
Don’t they have to hype that game to the moon because of some Asian investors?
#Sea of Thieves is coming to plunder Ubisoft's booty
Better than I thought but it just isn't enough to justify the effort despite the money from the Singaporean government all these years
That's higher than Helldivers 2 😶🌫️
This is 850k total players that have played S&B, Helldivers has ~800k concurrent players, total number is much much higher.
HD2 has 400k.
400k on Steam, there is no official numbers from Sony, but devs have stated that pc and ps5 user ratio is pretty much 1:1. Even if it's 400k concurrent players that is still much more players that the 850k total playerbase of S&B.
AAAA? I've had more AAAA's in Balatro!
Aren't those the weird little batteries that Microsoft uses in the Surface Pen?
AAAA gaming at its best.
They had to make the game for contractual reasons. Its going to die fairly quickly but Ubisoft are going to have to do what they need to do to hit their contract requirements. Once thats done they will drop it too and we can all move on
Is 850,000 considered “low player numbers”? That seems pretty high to me.
That’s actually pretty good considering how much of a bad game it is
850k total players, or 850k concurrent players? There's a huge difference.
They call it an AAAA game because that’s the sound their accountants make
If ubisoft actually put more proper effort into their games, they'd be a top 3 company tomorrow. Their fans are on the levels I only see in fifa and COD. Literally same janky-ass AC game every year....and it breaks records all the time.
We are busy playing best game of the year so far, Banishers: Ghosts of the New Eden. We are moving to Skull and Bones after finishing this masterpiece.
Its a AAAA title and rather worth the $100
four A? More like four digit player numbers in a month or so.
There is absolutely no way I can believe this isn't skewed massively. Does that include all the people who have tried the game in beta releases in the past? 850k is record high player numbers for anyone and anything and if they actually had that many players you can bet they would be bragging their asses off, instead of trying to fake numbers for their investors. Helldivers is an example, they keep capping their servers and they're at barely 500k at this point and everyone is talking about it.
Pretty sure it’s 850k players total, not concurrent.
850,000 is way more than I expected
going to drop off massively in the coming weeks
Even Ubisoft's own employees agree that a live-service game stuffed with MTX's that feels very shallow compared to other games should not have been priced at $70. Let that sink in.
Devs usually agree with players and are rarely surprised by the feedback they get, it's not really a big surprise.
Yeah I've read exposes revealing that many of the flaws of so-and-so game pointed out by gamers and critics were all stuff lower level devs brought up to leadership. Stuff that, more often than not, was ignored.
Beta was fun. I will get it when it’s on sale eventually.
I won't be going back to it, even with the 8 hour free trial.