Starting With Skull & Bones On Nov. 8th, All "Big AAA" Ubisoft Games Will Be $70

After announcing a glut of projects set in the Assassin's Creed universe, Ubisoft clarified the pricing of their AAA game project moving forward. Starting with the release of Skull & Bones on November 8th, all future Ubisoft AAA video games will be priced at $70 on Xbox Series X|S and PS5. This move coincides with other developers moving the price of their larger releases at $70 for designed for Xbox Series X|S and PS5. For example, Square-Enix priced the PS5 and PC release of Final Fantasy VII Remake at $70 and Take-Two Interactive released the Series X and PS5 versions of NBA 2K21 at $70. Call of Duty: Black Ops - Cold War also had a similar price point at launch on Series X and PS5.

Guillemot clarified that this price increase would not apply to all of the games in Ubisoft's portfolio and point to Assassin's Creed Mirage as an example of an upcoming Ubisoft project that would be priced at $50.

Well, I haven't picked up an Ubisoft title in about six years now, and I guess I won't be again anytime soon.

Anyone have a rough idea what their financials look like these days? I do know that the top line is they need a hit in a big way, but how bad a shape are they in, really?

Of course, this may be as simple as saying "Hey, these other guys are doing it, we can get away with it too."

The last fiscal year, 2021-22, was overall pretty good for Ubisoft. Their net bookings, which means the net amount of products and services sold digitally or sold-in physically, was only down by 5% which might not sound great, but compare favorably to other game studios.

Their CFO stated in a statement to shareholders that they plan to have Assassin’s Creed, Far Cry and Rainbow Six to be the major money makers of the company and they plan to use surplus revenue from those three "tentpole franchises" to fund development of new IPs.

Guillemot also said in that same interview that the rampant sexual harassment going on stems from "a new younger generation coming in with different needs" and that they "didn't adapt fast enough". So yeah, give this man more money.

Oh boy, Ubisoft is becoming arrogant just like Sony Interactive Entertainment when it comes to the pricing of their published games.

Not too surprised. Game prices haven't changed in decades and development isn't getting cheaper or quicker.

And Ubisoft isn't exactly known for its efficiency.

$70 is just the new normal and it'll only entice consumers to switch to services like Game Pass, to wait until prices drop, or pony up for the cash if they have that FOMO.

i mean, it makes sense. the ceiling for a new major publisher game can't be $60 forever.

personally i like AAA production values, so if i have to pay an additional $10, i can live with that. besides- although the cost of AAA day 1 purchases might be going up, there are so many ways to game on the cheap these days between Game Pass, Epic Store giveaways, Steam sales, etc.

Yeah, I'm fully prepared for 70 bucks to be the new standard, although I'm not thrilled about it. It just grates that Ubisoft-- home of the most cookie-cutter-ass game design-- is among the first to jump up to that price point.

Oh well. More grist for the subscription service debate, I suppose.

This doesn’t really bother or surprise me too much since Sony already made this change. However, I’m really surprised they will test the market for this with Skull and Bones. Is anyone super excited for this game? Or perhaps it is the parent company throwing the devs a bone and being able to use that as an excuse if it doesn’t live up to the investors expectations.

New games being £70 (publishers don't bother doing accurate conversions between $ and £ anymore) means I won't really be buying any full-price games at launch. This thread being specific to Ubisoft probably isn't relevant to me since I don't plan to buy another Ubisoft product, well, ever.

These days I mainly get to play games from small devs, or else Square Enix titles after I put aside the cognitive dissonance, what with being aware of SE's shitty practices also.

I've already said this before, but I'll say it again: We've already been paying more than $60 for games over the past several years.

I'll just wait for The Crew 3 to go on sale.

This is honestly not a huge deal for me. For context, I live in the US and I understand that this may disproportionately affect people in other regions who can only buy games with other currencies. The thing is, I don't buy all that many games at launch. If a game launches at $60 or $70, it doesn't really matter to me if I know that it's going to be $40 during a sale within six months. When it's a game like this, that is heavily multi-player and which most of my friends won't be playing, it becomes even easier to wait.

If I'm Ubi I maybe wait until after I release my long-in-troubled-development laughingstock to raise prices, but hey I'm not the MBA here.

10 more reasons not to buy a Ubisoft game.

Ubisoft just keep shooting themselves in the foot lately, but I'm not surprised. People accepted buying games at 70$, so why not jump on the bandwagon if millions of people are willing to pay. Just like millions are willing to go into debt spending money on microtransctions. It's the people's own fault at the end of the day, corporations only care about the bottomeline.

Damn kids and their expectations of basic decency in working conditions!