A developer at the Cyberpunk 2077 studio, CD Projekt Red, has playfully mocked Ubisoft's use of the term "Quadruple-A" to describe its latest release, Skull and Bones. Inspired by the exceptional naval combat that debuted in Assassin's Creed 4: Blag Flag, Ubisoft's Skull and Bones attempts to refine that system in a shared-world live service experience. Despite Ubisoft CEO Yves Guillemot boasting Skull and Bones as a "AAAA" game, its February launch left a lot to be desired, so much so that its release gave Assassin's Creed 4 an unexpected spike in player count.

CD Projekt Red is certainly no stranger to an underwhelming game launch, to put it lightly. The 2020 release of Cyberpunk 2077 was disastrous, as the futuristic open world sci-fi RPG was drowning in bugs and technical issues abound. The backlash was so extreme that PlayStation removed the game from its digital storefront. As bad as the sentiment surrounding CD Projekt Red was, the studio didn't give up on Cyberpunk 2077 and continued to release updates and bug fixes in the years following. With the game finally running as intended, CD Projekt Red released Cyberpunk 2077's Phamtom Liberty DLC last year to raving reception, solidifying the game as a must-play RPG and redeeming CD Projekt Red as one of the industry's premier RPG studios.

In a recent CD Projekt Red investor call Q&A, one developer poked a bit of fun when asked about Ubisoft and its freshly released Skull and Bones. The investor brought up Ubisoft and its use of "AAAA" to describe its new games, asking "Will you therefore dare to reassess whether CD Projekt will continue to produce 'only' AAA?", to which the CD developer jokingly responded "Ours will be AAAAA". Many feel this newfound use of "AAAA" to describe AAA games may set a dangerous precedent in terms of setting incorrect expectations for games that already have exorbitant budgets and difficult time constraints.

What Is CD Projekt Red Working On?
The rest of the investor call made mention of some of the other games CD Projekt Red currently has in production now that Cyberpunk 2077 has wrapped up with Phantom Liberty. The company currently has three Witcher games in the pipeline: Project Solaris, which is believed to be The Witcher 4, a multiplayer Witcher spinoff known as Project Sirius, and a remake of the original 2007 Witcher game. CD Projekt also has the sequel to Cyberpunk 2077, Project Orion, currently in the concept phase. On top of all this, the studio additionally has a new IP in the concept stages as well, which is being referred to as Project Hadar.

It'll be interesting to see whether Ubisoft continues to describe its upcoming games as AAAA. Its highly anticipated open world Star Wars Outlaws game is supposedly aiming to release sometime later this year. The next big Assassin's Creed title, codenamed Red, may also be looking for a 2024 launch.

Posted: Apr 12, 2024 9:37 pm
Related Forum: Gaming Discussion

Source: https://gamerant.com/cd-projekt-red-aaaaa-game-skull-and-bones-ubisoft/