Ubisoft's open-world pirate adventure Skull & Bones has been delayed again

Ubisoft's long-in-the-works open-world pirate adventure Skull & Bones has been delayed again, seemingly pushing any potential new release date beyond March next year.

Skull & Bones was originally unveiled back at E3 2017, and was expected to launch on Xbox One, PS4, and PC some time in 2018. Last May, however, Ubisoft announced that it had made the decision to postpone its release to the 2019 financial year, making today's announcement the second public delay for the game.

Ubisoft broke news of the delay on Skull & Bones' official Twitter page, writing that, "We're going to batten down the hatches and push back on the game's arrival - this is a challenging news for us all, but it's what's needed to make Skull & Bones as awesome as it can be!".

The announcement was accompanied by a short video from Skull & Bones' senior producer Karl Luhe, confirming that, in conjunction with the release delay, the game will also be skipping this year's E3. "Rest assured that we are working as hard as ever to make sure that the game is going to be as great as possible," said Luhe, "and quality remains our number one focus".

Luhe offered assurances that "Ubisoft remains fully devoted to this exciting journey to bring you this brand-new game", and promised that more updates would be shared "as soon as we can".

One detail conspicuously absent from Ubisoft's latest announcement is, of course, a revised launch window. In response to a request asking for more specific detail on Twitter, Ubisoft wrote that, "For now, we do not have a release date for the game. Instead, we're choosing to let our team take the time they need to make Skull & Bones awesome for all our future players."

However, Ubisoft's previous release estimate for Skull & Bones, following last year's postponement, would have placed launch somewhere between April 2019 and March 2020. As such, it seems likely that Skull & Bones is no longer expected to arrive before April next year.