Skull & Bones is just over a week away from release, and barring any further delays, we'll be sailing the high seas on February 16. With the game's upcoming release, it was a big part of Ubisoft's most recent conference call that discussed Ubisoft’s Q3 sales for the fiscal year. In a Q&A session during the call, Ubisoft CEO Yves Guillemot was asked how he could justify Skull & Bones' premium $70 price tag despite it having live service elements that would benefit from a free-to-play model.

According to Guillemot (thanks VGC), Skull & Bones will set you back a hefty $70 because it's a "fully-fledged game". Guillemot goes on to explain that Skull and Bones is a "quadruple-A game" and says that it will "deliver in the long run". Given that the game isn't even out yet, we don't really know what Ubisoft's plans are for post-launch content, so whether the game will actually deliver remains to be seen.

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Funnily enough, Skull & Bones will actually be the first game from Ubisoft to be priced at $70, which publishers have usually justified by claiming the game with that increased price tag will be more ambitious as a result. Quite why Ubisoft has decided to do it with an infamous, very niche new IP instead of an Assassin's Creed of some kind is puzzling, though not much about Skull & Bones' development makes much sense from an outside perspective.

“It’s a very big game, and we feel that people will really see how vast and complete that game is. It’s a really full, triple… quadruple-A game, that will deliver in the long run.”

Ubisoft will also probably be trying to get back some of the cash that it spent during development, which reportedly cost around $200 million dollars to make. It's already being reported that Ubisoft doesn't expect to make any profit on Skull & Bones, which isn't at all surprising given how long it's been in development, and that bloated budget could possibly be a reason for Ubisoft charging so much and refusing to go free-to-play despite it probably being in the game's best interest.

We'll have to see how the full launch of Skull & Bones shakes out on February 16, though releasing during a month that has also seen titles like Persona 3 Reload, Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth, and Like A Dragon: Infinite Wealth launch may see it get lost in the pile a little bit. However, it's become clear that even though Ubisoft considers Skull & Bones a "quadruple-A game", it doesn't have high hopes for it.

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