Never has there been a more exciting time to be a game, but likewise, never before has being a gamer been so expensive. The price of AAA titles and Indies has been hotly debated for years now, and with each new game released, people are outraged from the start again.
That being said, Ubisoft CEO Yves Guillemot thinks the upcoming Skull and Bones has earned its $70, or R1,327 price tag – which is something I’m sure every game developer thinks of their game.
Skull and Bones was a game that was first revealed at E3 2017. However, it was revealed that the studio had started actively working on the game as early as 2013. Back in the early days, Skull and Bones was envisioned as a multiplayer DLC for Assassin’s Creed 4: Black Flag, but in time, it grew into its own stand-alone game.
This change in direction wasn’t the only rough seas the game would face. Since its E3 debut, the development has been plagued with multiple changes in leadership, direction and scope to high employee turnover and repeatedly exceeding its budget.
To top all that off, reports from Skull and Bones’ beta testers haven’t been encouraging, which makes the developers’ claims about the quality of the game even harder to take seriously.
In a recent earnings call, Yves Guillemot explained why he believes that the $70 price is reasonable for a game like Skull and Bones and turned down the suggestion that the game might have been better served by going free-to-play.
“It’s a really full, triple… quadruple-A game, that will deliver in the long run.”
On top of the upfront game cost, Skull and Bones plans to still rely heavily on live service elements. And while Yves Guillemot believes in the quality and scope of the game, back in December, beta testers were quitting Skull and Bones due to boredom.
But don’t take other random players’ word for it; Skull and Bones currently have an open beta running until the 11th of February, and this beta supports cross-play on PC, PS5, and Xbox Series X/S, as well as letting players carry their progress over to the full game.
We’re still excited to get our hands on Skull and Bones and test the waters for ourselves, but we’d love to hear your thoughts on the game and its price in the comments below.