These details are part of an exclusive report by Tom Henderson via Insider-Gaming, who claims to have gathered information from “multiple” sources. Although asked about it, publisher Ubisoft has declined to comment on these new details, stating that they do not “comment on rumors and speculation”.
According to the report, fans should forget everything they have heard or seen in the presentation trailer from years ago, as the remake is being completely developed from scratch.
This means that the remake has been rewritten, recaptured in mocap, and much more. Although it has been said otherwise, the previous work of Ubisoft Mumbai and Pune has not been used for the new version. Additionally, it is said that the remake’s revision offers a “more realistic approach” compared to what was shown in the announcement trailer.
20 years ago, one of the most heroic tales in video games was released: Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time. pic.twitter.com/6NPOAgNKXB
— Prince of Persia™: The Lost Crown (@princeofpersia) November 21, 2023
In addition to a complete graphical overhaul, the animations, combat mechanics, and parkour have also been revised for the rebooted Sands of Time remake. Another interesting detail is that Yuri Lowenthal, the actor who played the prince in the original trilogy and the initial remake, will not reprise his role in the new version.
According to Henderson, judging by the images they sent him, the game is still in an early stage of development. Therefore, the remake will not be released soon.
The Ubisoft remake was officially announced in 2020, but reports suggested that the game’s development had been quite problematic. At the end of last year, Ubisoft announced that the game had reached a “major milestone”.
At the beginning of this year, a list of game trophies appeared on PlayStation Network, which made many think that the release would not take too long. It will be interesting to see how the game’s development evolves and if the Insider-Gaming report is accurate.
This is an original adventure set in the ever-expanding galaxy of games based on the beloved Lucasfilm franchise. You can pre-order the game starting today, April 9th, and there are several incentives for getting it early.
Developed by Massive Entertainment, Outlaws follows the protagonist Kay Vess and her loyal alien companion Nix in their adventure through the galactic criminal underworld. In the game, we will visit places like Tatooine and Canto Bight, as well as Kijimi, Akiva, and a new planet called Toshara.
The trailer suggests that Vess wants to get a big loot from the wealthy Zerek Besh family to buy her freedom. Keep reading to learn all the details about the reservation, including the skins, post-launch downloadable content and other features that define each edition.
How to book the standard edition of Star Wars Outlaws
By booking any edition of Star Wars Outlaws, you unlock the Kessel Runner bonus pack, which includes a skin for your speeder and your Trailblazer spaceship.
The standard edition costs €69.99. In digital format, you can pre-order it directly on PlayStation or Microsoft, as well as for Windows PC on the Ubisoft website.
How to book the Gold edition of Star Wars Outlaws
The gold edition of Star Wars Outlaws allows you to play three days earlier and includes the season pass for €109.99. The pass offers two downloadable contents after the release that expand the story with new missions and environments.
You will also receive the extra mission Jabba’s Gambit at launch, in addition to the Kessel Runner character pack that includes additional skins for Kay and Nix.
How to book the ultimate edition of Star Wars Outlaws
The definitive edition of Star Wars Outlaws costs €129.99 and includes everything from the gold edition, as well as two additional cosmetic packs with new looks for Kay, Nix, your speeder, and the Trailblazer. It also includes a digital art book with the conceptual art and cinematic scripts that the developers used to design the game.
At the time of writing these lines, physical copies of the definitive edition are not available, but you can pre-order the digital version for PS5 and Xbox Series X / S through their respective stores and for PC with Windows on the Ubisoft website.
The shutting down of servers rendering games inoperative is a common occurrence, and it will increasingly become so, but this YouTuber wants to prevent it.
News of game servers closing down are becoming increasingly common. There is no month where two or three do not happen, not counting those that are not even announced, closing them without prior notice. Until now, it has been accepted that it was a natural condition of the life of video games. When they are games with any kind of online feature, after a few years, developers close them because there are no longer enough people playing to justify keeping them.
However, this doesn’t have to be the case. Video games are not just consumer goods and it would be logical for them to remain alive over time for those who continue to be interested in them. Even for those who discover them later than their original release. This is something that a group of players has also thought about.
A man named Ross Scott, who has a channel called Accursed Farms, has posted a 31-minute video on his channel explaining his idea for a campaign against the closure of video game servers. His idea is that, if enough people pressurize, they could make a radical change in how these situations are addressed, by forcing governments to legislate on abandoned video game servers. Specifically, the game he has chosen to start his plan with is one that no one would have expected: The Crew.
The Crew is a car game by Ubisoft, which included role-playing elements in a persistent world of urban racing. Although it was not a great critical success, it achieved a relatively high level of popularity, leading to two expansion packs, as well as two sequels, the latest of which was released on September 14th.
Now the question is, why choose The Crew over any other game? Ross Scott has said that this is mainly due to two reasons: that its server shutdown was planned for April 1st, and the fact that it is a game that cannot be played offline. In other words, once The Crew servers cease to exist, it will literally be a dead game. A game that is impossible to play. Something that, even if Scott did not choose this game specifically because it is from Ubisoft, has a lot to do with the fact that it is.
Ubisoft has had a particularly unpleasant controversy this year, when their subscriptions director, Phillip Tremblay, made some statements that did not sit well. Stating that players should get used to not owning their games, he compared the world of video games to that of movies and music. That the natural progression is towards streaming and digital downloads, and that game ownership should not be something that prevents or slows down this transition.
This is something to be expected from a subscriptions director, but it is also expected that they are aware of how they will alienate the audience. Something that led to a tremendous backlash against Ubisoft, which now also faces a coordinated movement against the closure of one of its games’ servers.
The way to achieve this is through two initiatives. The first one is through The Crew. Taking advantage of the closure of its servers, if you own the game, you must contact Ubisoft and explain to them that you consider this to be a form of planned obsolescence, and include evidence that you own the game. The other one depends on your location in the world. If you are in the USA, Canada, or Australia, you should contact the relevant authorities of the country about this situation. If you are in a country belonging to the European Union, wait for the opening of the European Citizens’ Initiative in which they will request that game servers cannot be shut down, and sign it.
All of this is explained in detail on the website that Scott has opened to coordinate his efforts, named Stop Killing Games. A place you should visit if you want to know all the details of how you can join the movement that is trying to take off.
All of this has a clear purpose, and that is for Stop Killing Games to achieve legislation that ensures four rights for players when games are abandoned. That they remain in a functional state. That they do not require connection to the publisher’s or associated parties’ server. That it also applies to games that have sold microtransactions. And that all of the above cannot be replaced through the end user license agreement. An ambitious purpose, but certainly not impossible.
If Scott and Stop Killing Games will be able to stop companies from killing their games, it’s still up in the air. But it’s clear that it’s something that won’t stop happening if we don’t do something about it. And maybe now is the time to do it.
Unfortunately, despite being very good, the game’s sales have been lower than expected, as we learned from Ubisoft’s own business update for shareholders: they barely reached 800,000 players after a month of release.
And yet, Ubisoft has not given up, as we have seen with the latest update from their development team, who have not said their last word about the game.
— Prince of Persia™: The Lost Crown (@princeofpersia) February 22, 2024
A free DLC with more content and bug fixes
Yesterday, the developers took to Twitter to provide an update to the community. The game director, Mounir Radi, appeared in a short video to thank the fans for their warm reception. He also stated that Ubisoft Montpellier is far from done with their support for the game.
“We have great plans for the coming months. These plans include free updates that add more content and modes, modes for you to challenge, explore and enjoy. Our first free update will be coming soon,” explained Mounir Radi in the tweet.
Radi did not provide further details, although he shared the advice that Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown players should train with Artaban and possibly try to complete the game in Immortal mode in anticipation of upcoming content.
We are very happy that Ubisoft wants to give more support and love to a game that has delighted the press (with an 86 on Metacritic) and the players (another 86), despite the sales not being as expected.
Skull & Bones has failed to surpass the one million player mark, and currently has around 850,000. Obviously, it’s not a very high number…
A couple of days ago we published our review of Skull and Bones. We did it honestly and realistically. The game is much better than many believed and the potential is tremendous. However, the game has not managed to convince players in its first week.
According to a new report from InsiderGaming, Skull & Bones has not managed to surpass one million players, and currently has around 850,000. Obviously, this is not a very high number for a game of this kind.
Obviously, it is not a negligible figure, but it is much less impressive when you consider that it includes players who have been testing the gamethrough its 8-hour free trial version, and it is supposed to be the number of players of the game on all platforms.
EXCLUSIVE – Skull and Bones Has Less Than 1 Million Players Total, Including Free Trial Playershttps://t.co/nKZOrPU4Ce
At the moment, it is unknown how many of those who have played the free trial will become paying customers, although Ubisoft has not given it the best opportunity.
This price has been heavily criticized by both fans and critics, but it seems that internally as well. A Ubisoft employee who spoke with InsiderGaming said that “we all know that it’s a game worth between 30 and 40 dollars at best”, but aspects like the price of a game “are not under our control”.
Skull & Bones has many live service elements, and asking players to shell out 70 dollars just to be able to get in can be too many dollars.
However, there is a glimmer of hope and an opportunity for Ubisoft to change things and reverse the game’s fate. According to this report, those who play Skull & Bones do so for an average of three to four hours a day, which means that engagement is quite high.
It seems like once players are in, they get hooked. It’s unlikely that Skull & Bones will switch to a free-to-play model now that people have spent their money, but the launch of Game Pass could give it the push it needs before it’s too late.
Is Skull and Bones a meme game that Ubisoft has been forced to release? Definitely not, and we’ll explain today why it could become…
I vividly remember the day when Ubisoft first announced Skull and Bones. It was E3 2017, I was covering the conference for an international media outlet, and we all stood up from the couch when we saw the black sails of the pirate ships sailing the seas.
This game was the response to a game that had worked wonders five years earlier, in 2013 exactly, and was called Assassin’s Creed Black Flag. The purist fans of the Assassin’s Creed saga criticized the game a lot, but us regular players had a great time sailing and looting in the Caribbean.
It was then that Ubisoft realized that a game about ships, pirates, camaraderie, and action could work very well. Whether it was part of the Assassin’s Creed saga or not. That’s why at first Skull and Bones was a DLC for Black Flag… to end up being a standalone game that took too long to be released.
Welcome to Sainte Anne, home of pirates
We have waited seven years since its first trailer, but the game is finally here. The Ubisoft team asked the press to take our time to play, calmly and with friends, before giving our verdict.
For that reason, we took an extra week, as the game was released on Tuesday, February 13th in early access for deluxe edition buyers. In my case, I’ve already spent about 20 hours pirating and have been able to play alone and with up to three friends. So hold on tight to the ship because a storm is coming.
The game presents us initially as a survivor castaway from a naval battle at high sea. A small boat rescues us and keeps us safe. That’s when our story begins.
Skull and Bones is out!
Play now and carry your progression from Open Beta ?
Forced to go to Sainte Anne, a prosperous port where there are only pirates and people of ill repute, but where they need us to continue fueling the wheel of piracy in the Indian Ocean.
Of course, the game is designed as live services, so the story is what it is while the missions escalate in difficulty and variety. Let no one be deceived, here we have come to become the greatest pirate of our time and the missions are excuses to learn how to play.
Navigate, assault, loot and board
The game delivers what it promises: we spend the day at sea, sailing our ship in search of battles, collecting goods, and completing missions. And the game gradually teaches you its depth.
Once we arrive at Sainte Anne, the different stalls and merchants show you what the game is about and how to play it. Get a bigger boat, for that you need to buy the blueprint, collect these materials and pay some money. Perfect.
Now you need better cannons, so go to the blacksmith and get the level 3 torpedo blueprints, now collect the cast iron and nickel, now pay for the labor… and so on with every aspect of the game.
Luckily, the progression is not very demanding and we are catching on. Both that and the different types of missions. From the main ones, which advance the story and give you fame and recognition among pirates, to assignments, treasure maps, investigations, and contracts with the rum smuggling network.
After 5 hours of playing, one starts to realize that the game only asks and asks… in exchange for some fun and a lot of combat.
Too much cinematography in a truly captivating world
But in all of this, which sounds very good and has had me hooked for a week, there is one negative point that I am unable to overlook. Because it hurts me that it is like this, especially when its predecessor had already solved this problem that I am going to describe: there is no life outside the ship.
All the interactions we have with other ships, with other forts, with other players… everything is cinematic. There is no hand-to-hand combat, only from the ship. Do you want to board? Throw the hooks and let a cinematic tell you what happens and what loot you collect.
Do you want to raid a strong enemy? Once again, fight against watchtowers and ships, but in the final part, let an identical cinematic be the one to say what you have looted from the outpost.
Even the interaction and movement of our pirate is clumsy, erratic, and not very believable. Without going any further: he doesn’t even know how to swim, if you go too deep into the water, it will push you out as if you were a message in a bottle floating in the sea.
If after playing Skull and Bones you watch a video of an assault from Assassin’s Creed: Black Flag your soul drops to your feet… and rightfully so.
A game that time can treat very well and that is not the meme we feared
If we take into account other games of the same style, as happened with No Man’s Sky or Sea of Thieves, for example, it is possible that Skull and Bones ends up becoming the ultimate multiplayer pirate game we always wanted.
But right now, it’s not what we expected when they sold us the perfect pirate life simulator. Be careful, because it’s very fun and has a lot of room for improvement, but it lacks some key pillars to establish itself as something that endures over time and accumulates millions of players.
Of course, what has been released is not a minor game or a meme, it is a good game that is fun to play and looks really good, but in my opinion, to convince everyone, there are parts that are missing. And the cinematics fail to mask that lack of effort (or desire).
After a few months of waiting, the update for Assassin’s Creed Mirage will be available on February 20th. The “Total Synchronization Challenge”…
A few months ago, we were pleasantly surprised when we played the highly anticipated Assassin’s Creed Mirage. This little adventure, originally intended to be a DLC for AC: Valhalla, captured our hearts with an interesting story and fun gameplay.
If you want to read our review, where we go into detail about a game that surprised millions in 2023, here it is. But today we are here to talk about other things… related to Basim’s adventure.
Assassin’s Creed Mirage fans have been eagerly awaiting the permadeath mode for over three months, as it was originally planned to be included in a major update for late 2023, but ended up being delayed until 2024.
Permanent death mode, ideal for the most skilled players
After several months of waiting, the Assassin’s Creed Mirage update will be available on February 20th. The “Total Synchronization Challenge” will test players’ endurance, as their save file is automatically deleted when they desynchronize from the animus. Those who complete the mode will receive different cosmetics depending on the difficulty they are playing on.
Assassin’s Creed Mirage Title Update 1.0.7 launches tomorrow, February 20th @ 12 PM UTC.
☠️ Added Full Synchronization Challenge (Permadeath) & Rewards.
And the 1.0.7 update is not limited to permadeath mode. Mirage players will also have access to a new feature that allows them to switch to any outfit. The Transmog feature expands aesthetic options.
On the other hand, Ubisoft is also teasing a new Easter egg with cats for players to discover. In addition, several bug fixes have been made to address some of the issues that have been affecting the game in recent weeks.
Remember that Assassin’s Creed Mirage, one of the best Assassins of recent years, is now available for PlayStation, Xbox, and PC. I wouldn’t hesitate to try it.
Negative reviews focus on pacing issues and a limited focus on game design. “Painfully slow and boring,” explains one user.
The piracy simulator from Ubisoft, Skull and Bones, was released on February 16. However, despite promising a lot of features in the lead-up to the launch, it seems that the high-seas adventure game has crashed against the rocks when it comes to user reviews.
Currently, Skull and Bones has an average score of 31 on Metacritic, based on over 300 user reviews at the time of writing this article.
Many of these comments make unfavorable comparisons with Assassin’s Creed 4: Black Flag. Released in 2013, Black Flag put you in the shoes of Welsh pirate Edward Kenway and involved a lot of sword fighting, naval battles, and stealth.
On the contrary, Skull and Bones focuses more on naval battles, as players send their sailors to board enemy ships in a short cinematic instead of engaging in melee combat.
Negative reviews focus on pacing issues and a limited game design approach. “Painfully slow and boring,” explains one user, while another complained, “It’s worse than it looks. There’s no ship boarding, no swimming, naval battles are all the same. It has no ending.”
The 12 professional reviews on Metacritic at the time of writing this article are more favorable, with an average of 64, which the site classifies as “mixed”. These reviews are slightly more favorable than those of the users: PC Gamer, our affiliated website, states: “Skull and Bones, which combines a brooding and rewarding ship combat with a superficial live service, is great within the claustrophobic parameters allowed by market forces”.
You’ll have eight hours to roam around as you please, which, based on my experience with the game (I’ve currently played about 15 hours), is sufficient…
If you’re curious to try the game, but the full price (on console we’re talking about 69 euros) puts you off, we have good news: there is a free eight-hour trial version available, so you can see what it’s about without paying a penny.
The CEO of Ubisoft, Yves Guillemot, recently defended the price, describing Skull and Bones as a “quadruple A game” and stating that “people will truly see how vast and complete the game is” once they play it. And of course, this trial is for those who are hesitant to pay upfront without trying it first.
A perfect free trial for the undecided
The challenge, of course, is to convince players to take that first step: 70 euros is a lot of money to satisfy curiosity, after all, especially considering that the reception of the pre-launch open beta was not very good.
This is where the trial version comes into play. Go to the store of your choice (Epic Games Store or Ubisoft for PC) and select the free trial version of the game.
You will have eight hours to wander at your leisure, which, according to my experience with the game (I have about 15 hours right now), is enough to at least get a taste of the town of Sainte Anne after the tutorial, and any progress you make in the trial version will carry over to the full game if you decide to purchase it.
As you can guess, even with Skull and Bones fully launched everywhere soon, we’re always cooking some improvements. We heard some of your early feedback, so we’ve been hard at work to smooth out your experience. Here is a recap ? pic.twitter.com/4WXgWRpmJQ
The launch of Skull and Bones seems to be going reasonably well so far, at least in the sense that nothing seems to have exploded, metaphorically speaking. Ubisoft has already addressed some issues, such as contract completion requirements, resource regeneration time, and some server problems, and they are working on it.
While we will have a review soon, we can already tell you at this point that Skull and Bones is a much more fun and complete game than we all expected. Although it is far from perfect.
Some investors were wondering why this title is not a free-to-play experience, where everyone could play the game and monetize…
Some of us have been waiting for this game for so long that along the way, we got married and had children. Yes, it may seem like an exaggeration, but development started in 2013, so we’re talking about more than a decade of waiting.
However, some investors wondered why this title is not a free-to-play experience, where everyone could play the game and monetize the experience with cosmetics and season passes (like in Fortnite).
Ubisoft CEO Yves Guillemot has defended the decision to price Skull and Bones at $70 despite its live service leanings, calling it a "quadruple-A game".https://t.co/6xc6SqMOSTpic.twitter.com/uMlwsTbby0
In that same place, and thanks to a report from VGC, we learned that the CEO of Ubisoft has made comments about the price they have set for Skull and Bones.
“You will see that Skull and Bones is a full-fledged game. It is a very big game, and we believe that people will truly see how vast and complete it is. It is a truly complete, triple… quadruple A game, that will deliver in the long term,” said the CEO of the company.
That being said, Yves pointed out that it is a complete game and even referred to it as a quadruple triple gameA. However, it remains to be seen how this will hold up when the title is released and we start to see the subsequent release of content to support the game.
For those who don’t know, Skull and Bones is an action and adventure game set in the golden age of piracy. Players will take on the role of pirate captains and engage in naval warfare in search of precious loot.
Currently, the official release of the game is scheduled for February 16, 2024. You will find Skull and Bones available for PC, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series X/S platforms when the title is launched.
