Skull & Bones will take gamers to the Golden Age of Piracy where they will create their own unique pirate captains and sail through the beautiful yet treacherous Indian Ocean filled with rich merchant trade routes to loot. Whether it is on their own or as part of a pirate gang, gamers will take the helm of their powerful warship and lead their crew into the endless battle to rule the seas and become the deadliest pirate kingpin.

In Skull & Bones, you are an insatiable, upstart pirate captain who has refused the king’s pardon. Having nothing to lose, you sailed from the Caribbean to the Indian Ocean, an exotic and untamed frontier full of lavish riches.

However, these rich and idyllic waters are also a battleground where far-reaching colonial empires, powerful trading corporations, and ruthless pirate gangs are fiercely competing for their share of these valuable treasures.

During your journey to become the ultimate pirate kingpin, you will build a fleet of ships you can customize, prey upon lucrative trade routes, and take down rival pirate captains, memorable characters, or other players. In order to survive in this ruthless ocean, you will have to ally with other pirate captains to form the most influential pirate gang, becoming too big to fail and joining the endless struggle for supremacy of the Indian Ocean.

Skull & Bones is an online naval game that will take players across a dynamic, shared open-ocean that reacts to their actions and evolves to continuously challenge them. Building upon the studio’s naval gameplay expertise, Skull & Bones introduces an innovative wind system that gives gamers tactical opportunities to navigate more quickly, shoot further, hit harder, escape deadly blows, and position themselves to decimate their victims. Gamers will also be able to build their own fleet of ships, which can specialize in different battle conditions using the game’s extensive customization options.

Over the past 10 years, Ubisoft teams have organically created one of the deepest and most diversified portfolios of owned IPs in the industry. This has resulted in a significant transformation of the Group, the development of multiple major brands and much stronger recurring revenues thanks to highly successful Live Service games.

Despite these achievements, the Company is facing major challenges as the industry continues to shift towards mega-brands and long-lasting titles than can reach players across the globe, across platforms and business models. Our strategy over the past 4 years has been about building long-lasting live games and adapting our strongest franchises, mainly Assassin’s Creed, Far Cry, Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon, Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six and Tom Clancy’s The Division, to these converging trends to make them truly global brands. However, the games from this investment phase have yet to be released, while our recent launches have not performed as well as expected.

Compounding this effect, in the context of worsening macroeconomic conditions, the trends over the Holiday season, in particular the last weeks of December and beginning of January, have been markedly and surprisingly slower than expected.

This overall context has triggered a full review of our revenue prospects leading to increased cautiousness over the coming years. Considering this, combined with the significant additional investments that resulted from lockdown and new working patterns that have had a profound impact on productions across the industry over the past 3 years, Ubisoft is announcing today a set of measures dedicated to strengthening its long-term growth and value-creation prospects:

• Ensure all our energy is focused on building our brands and live services into some of the most powerful within the industry. As a consequence, we have decided to cancel three unannounced projects, on top of the four already announced in July 2022.
• Depreciate around €500m of capitalized R&D, concerning upcoming premium and Free-to-Play games and the newly cancelled titles. This notably reflects the increased cautiousness related to the current challenging videogame market and macroeconomic environment as well as the necessary increased focus on fewer titles.
• As part of our increased strategic focus, adapt our organization to a more challenging market, with an expected net reduction of our non-variable costs base of more than €200m over the next 2 years. This will be achieved through targeted restructuring, divesting some non-core assets and usual natural attrition. Ubisoft will continue to look at hiring highly talented people for its biggest brands and live services.

Yves Guillemot, Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer, said “We are clearly disappointed by our recent performance. We are facing contrasted market dynamics as the industry continues to shift towards mega-brands and everlasting live games, in the context of worsening economic conditions affecting consumer spending. Despite excellent ratings and players’ reception as well as an ambitious marketing plan, we were surprised by Mario + Rabbids®: Sparks of Hope underperformance in the final weeks of 2022 and early January. Just Dance® 2023 underperformed as well. Therefore, with the approval of the Board of Directors, we are taking additional important strategic and operational decisions today. It is key to continue adapting our organization, to further strengthen our execution and to ensure we both deliver amazing games to players as well as great value creation. The industry’s long-term prospects remain promising, and I am convinced Ubisoft is well positioned to benefit from this momentum thanks to the strength of our teams, brands, production capacity, technology and balance-sheet. Our back-catalogue remains very healthy with notably robust activity on Rainbow Six Siege, great momentum for our Assassin’s Creed games, and generally solid performance from our live games. We expect our strategy to build long-lasting live games and transform our biggest brands into truly global phenomenon with multiple offerings across platforms and business models, to ultimately generate significant value creation, with strong topline and operating income growth over the coming years."

Updated Financial Targets

Today, Ubisoft is revising its Q3 2022-23 net bookings target, now expected at approximately €725m versus the prior target of approximately €830m. This reflects the more challenging environment mentioned previously, which notably resulted in the lower-than-expected performance of Mario + Rabbids: Sparks of Hope and Just Dance 2023.

Players will be able to discover the beauty of Skull And Bones in the upcoming beta phase. The additional time has already paid off and brought impressive improvements to its quality, which has been confirmed by recent playtests. We believe players will be positively surprised by its evolution. We have decided to postpone its release in order to have more time to showcase a much more polished and balanced experience and to build awareness. Skull And Bones will now be released early 2023-24 (ed. April 1, 2023-March 31, 2024).

All this considered, Ubisoft is revising its full year targets with net bookings expected to be down more than 10% year-on-year versus a prior expectation of up more than 10%. Non-IFRS operating income, reflecting lower net bookings, the postponement of Skull and Bones and the depreciation of capitalized R&D for around €500m, is now expected at -€500m versus €400m previously.

Ubisoft is introducing today its 2023-24 non-IFRS operating income target at around €400m reflecting necessary prudence in the current challenging environment, while still expecting an overall strong topline growth thanks to a materially stronger line-up.

Ubisoft balance sheet is strong with around €1.5 billion in cash and cash equivalents after reimbursing the €500m bond expiring at the end of this month.

Frédéric Duguet, Chief Financial Officer, said “Our decisive reaction and our additional cost optimization measures should help us navigate the current challenging economic environment and ensure a leaner organization for the years to come. Leveraging the biggest pipeline of games in the Ubisoft’s history, 2023-24 will see the releases of Assassin’s Creed Mirage, Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora, Skull and Bones and other yet-to-be-announced premium games, including a large one, as well as promising Free-to-Play titles for some of our biggest brands.”

Key Features:

• Choose your own pirate captain and grow into the fierce legend that you have always wanted to be.Select your pirate ship class based on your preferred playstyle, evolving it with a rich RPG system. From the safe harbor of your hideout, recruit your crew, customize the ship of your dreams, and pick up on the latest rumors before you set sail to leave your mark on the world. With each successful heist, as your wealth and reputation increases, the world and other players begin to challenge your ascension. Sailing alone becomes a dangerous gamble. Your long-term survival depends on your ability to form the most powerful pirate gang in the Indian Ocean.
• Experience unparalleled naval gameplay delivered by the studio who pioneered and designed naval combat for the Assassin’s Creed franchise. Live the thrills, brutality, and intensity of naval combat as you fight for domination of the seas. Harness the innovative wind system in order to navigate more quickly, shoot further, hit harder, escape deadly blows, and position yourself to decimate your victims. Stalk your enemies and use your spyglass to identify weaknesses. Rally your gang to hunt and overpower large merchant ships and outsmart powerful rivals. Approach combat your own way with a wide number of tactical options at your disposal.
• Explore a systemic shared world that reacts to your actions and challenge your ascension across multiple parts of the Indian Ocean. Choose your path: engage in combat solo, or team up with other players to take down vicious predatory factions and well-defended convoys. The rewards are yours to share, or steal, if you are willing to face the consequences of betrayal and become a target for other players. There are even rumors of horrifying dangers lurking beneath the surface…
• Treacherous disputed waters separate the unique regions of the Indian Ocean, where pirate gangs compete for riches in explosive naval battles. Confront rival players in competitive 5v5 matches, and experience the ultimate pirate fantasy in a variety of game modes while you plunder the most valuable loot from the Indian Ocean’s richest trade routes and grow your influence.
• Fighting your way to the top will attract greater challenges for you and your gang. As the world evolves, Skull & Bones will continuously test the heights of your skill, the depths of your greed, and the resolve of your alliances. Vast new regions to explore, powerful ships, devastating weapons, and daring enemies, along with greater rewards, will tempt you from across the four corners of the Indian Ocean. Every victory will bring you closer to glory and raises the price on your head.

In preparation for launch, Skull & Bones will conduct several live alphas and betas. Gamers interested in participating can sign up here.

Skull & Bones will launch for PS5, Xbox Series X|S and PC in early 2023/2024.