During its quarterly earnings call held Thursday, Ubisoft confirmed it plans to launch Mario + Rabbids: Sparks of Hope, Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora, as well as the long-in-development pirate game Skull & Bones, all before the end of its 2023 fiscal year, which will wrap up in April 2023. Journalist and games media personality Geoff Keighley attended the call and shared a partial transcript of it on Twitter.
During the call, the company also stated that it would continue to embrace free-to-play titles “across all geographies and platforms.” Ubisoft has previously experimented with free-to-play games such as the soon-to-be-sunset Hyper Scape. The company also has several free-to-play titles in development, such as Tom Clancy’s XDefiant, and Ghost Recon Frontline.
Mario + Rabbids: Sparks of Hope and Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora were both announced in 2021 with expected 2022 release windows. It’s more shocking to see Skull & Bones appear in Ubisoft’s planned pipeline of upcoming games. The pirate-themed title started development in 2013 — nearly 10 years ago — and has seen numerous delays reportedly brought on by ever-changing visions for what kind of game it should be. During the call, the company stated that the title would feature both a “multiplayer-first” focus and an open-world structure.
No update was provided on Beyond Good & Evil 2, another Ubisoft title that has allegedly experienced a similarly rough multi-year development. In late 2021, it was reported that the game was undergoing a “development crisis” exacerbated by the departure of director Michel Ancel.
