• Hey, guest user. Hope you're enjoying NeoGAF! Have you considered registering for an account? Come join us and add your take to the daily discourse.

Ubisoft Reportedly Spent $650 to $850 Million on Skull and Bones

proandrad

Member
No, the money from Rhode Island was for the MMO that never came out.

The game that came out was basically a rebranded and reworked game in development from another studio.
Even better, 150million for a game that never saw the light of day. Imagine the total lost if they went through with marketing it.
 

Generic

Member

I can't find the words to comment.
The "source"

TK5gE3q.png
 

SmokedMeat

Gamer™
So something like eleven years and several hundred million dollars, to make a pirate game that doesn’t even match the pirate bits of Assassin’s Creed 4.

How pathetic is not only the management, but the teams being put together to make these games?

And people will stan for them and claim games are too cheap?! Fuck off.
 

Mossybrew

Member
"Guys after all this time, we've found the solution - you play as a pirate ship!"

"But uh, don't most people want to play as an actual pirate, not just a ship?"

"Nah, it'll be fine, we'll give them a few areas to walk around in and buy stuff."
 

mckmas8808

Mckmaster uses MasterCard to buy Slave drives
How many GAAS need to fail before they go back to making great single player games? It’s ok to add a MP mode. Blame the execs and shareholders for seeing the $$$$$ promised and raising expectations.

This is the question I'll like to have answered. These execs need to be fired left and right! The desperation to force GAAS into games that don't need is insane.
 

mckmas8808

Mckmaster uses MasterCard to buy Slave drives
This is what government subsidy does to both the budget and quality of a game.

Compare with subsidized medical care, education, housing, broadband infrastructure, etc and you see the trend.

If you think giving the private industries the responsibility to all forms of medical care, education, housing, and broadband............half the people in our country wouldn't have ANY of those things.

This post sounds like someone that has no clue how government works.
 
I loved Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag with its pirate them but that's because the ship and battles sections actually added something new and exciting to the formula. It was also a single player game.

I had zero interest in Skull and Bones. It never interested me in the build up to its release, I certainly had no desire to try the beta and I am even less interested in it now, particularly because it is a "live service" game, a genre which I absolutely loathe because they are usually grindy and boring, which is something that Ubisoft often get accused of for their single player titles!

I just hope this game and Concord are a wake up for publishers jumping on the live service game bandwagon. Not every game has to be a $100+ million triple A blockbuster; there is still plenty of room for smaller budget single player games and I would like to see publishers exploit that rather than online games that are designed first and foremost to make as much money out of the gamer as possible. I cannot think of a genre more boring than a live service title. I would honestly give up gaming completely if every game was like that.
 

Raven117

Member
This count the money the Singapore government threw at it?

We know it cost alot of money. Over that span of time, we know upwards of over 100 million (and likely higher).

Edit: All they had to do was make Black Flag 2. Morons.
 
Last edited:

Ozriel

M$FT
What do you guys think - will they reverse-race-swap the main character of Assassin's Creed Shadows?

They would be utterly daft to do that.
Just read this article. It's 100% legit. +400 devs for this bloody mess, LOL.




That article actually disproves the claim. Because it was $120m in 2021 after being in development since 2013. The article says it was ‘generously subsidized’ by the Singaporean government, which probably explains the low cost.

Anyone thinking you credibly go from $120m in 2021 to $650m in 2024 has to be a real jester.
 

Klayzer

Member
If you think giving the private industries the responsibility to all forms of medical care, education, housing, and broadband............half the people in our country wouldn't have ANY of those things.

This post sounds like someone that has no clue how government works.
Yeah, lets privatize essential services with little to no oversight. Great idea. The corporations definitely have your back.
V4zQDbb.gif
 

Da1337Vinci

Member
I just can't believe this. Either the number is way off or the budget was payed/subsidized by multiple governments.

A flop of such magnitude would be I imagined definitely something one must acknowledge with the shareholders or at least mentioned.
 

Interfectum

Member
This is the question I'll like to have answered. These execs need to be fired left and right! The desperation to force GAAS into games that don't need is insane.
The execs are playing the lottery... they don't give a shit about the gaming industry or if they tear it apart in the process. They'll churn through 100s of games and thousands of developers to get another Roblox, Fortnite or Minecraft. That is the goal. Everything else is small potatoes.
 

mckmas8808

Mckmaster uses MasterCard to buy Slave drives
I don't think it was a deciding factor at all, but it's clear that it doesn't help, what was clear with huge flops like Dustborne or Concord is that DEI policies don't sell games.

I agree with that. I also think bad games don't sell games. Neither of those games are even good.

The execs are playing the lottery... they don't give a shit about the gaming industry or if they tear it apart in the process. They'll churn through 100s of games and thousands of developers to get another Roblox, Fortnite or Minecraft. That is the goal. Everything else is small potatoes.

I'm starting to realize that this may be true, sadly. It feels like Microsoft is doing that now with their changes over the last 3-5 years.
 

PandaOk

Neo Member
I found another article which may lead credence to that number. Note that this is 2021 which reportedly costs $120 million which in 3 years and inflation may actually hit 650 or above.

I don’t know the numbers etc but Ubisoft received a huge amount of financial coverage from the Singapore government to produce Skull and Bones locally. Included were triggers for repayment based on hiring quotas, milestones, completion, presumably reception, and so on. Ubisoft also built a new team from the ground up in Singapore for this project with a new development location et all. It also wasn’t a Concord situation, in this case the project was rebooted multiple times while in full swing. Don’t know if the reported figure is accurate, but there is probably an easier way to bundle expenses to reach that range than there was for concords facetious 400 million claim.
 
Last edited:

Woopah

Member
I don't think it was a deciding factor at all, but it's clear that it doesn't help, what was clear with huge flops like Dustborne or Concord is that DEI policies don't sell games.
Which I think is the issue. The purpose of DEI is not to sell a product, but that's what some companies seem to be trying to do.
 
Top Bottom