Lots of Games are Catching the Delay Bug Going Around
I suppose it must be that time of year. Before we had cold and flu season, but now it appears to be that most painful time of year, Delay Season. In the last few days, video games have been hit with more than a few delays.
We’ll start with the slightly lighter of these painful moves: Square Enix earlier this week revealed that both Marvel’s Avengers, in development at Crystal Dynamics, and the slightly more hotly anticipated Final Fantasy VII Remake would both be delayed by at least a month. Like I said, painful. The former has been delayed to September 4, a decent time away from its original date of May 15. The latter, VII Remake has been pushed out only slightly from its previous date, from March 3 to April 10.
Crystal Dynamics posted an update on the CrystalD website, giving some reasoning behind their decision.
To our fans,
At Crystal Dynamics our ambition has always been to deliver the ultimate Avengers gaming experience. In order to achieve that goal, we have made the difficult decision to move the release date of Marvel’s Avengers to September 4, 2020.
…To that end, we will spend this additional development time focusing on fine tuning and polishing the game to the high standards our fans expect and deserve.
…We apologize for the delay. We’re confident it will be worth the wait.
Scot Amos & Ron Rosenberg
Co-Heads of Studio, Crystal Dynamics~
Square Enix had a similar message to the fans regarding the delay of Final Fantasy VII Remake:
We know that so many of you are looking forward to the release of FINAL FANTASY VII REMAKE and have been waiting patiently to experience what we have been working on. In order to ensure we deliver a game that is in-line with our vision, and the quality that our fans who have been waiting for deserve, we have decided to move the release date to April 10, 2020.
We are making this tough decision in order to give ourselves a few extra weeks to apply final polish to the game and to deliver you with the best possible experience. I, on behalf of the whole team, want to apologize to everyone, as I know this means waiting for the game just a little bit longer.
Thank you for your patience and continued support.
Yoshinori Kitase, Producer of FINAL FANTASY VII REMAKE.
Now! The more devastating news: Cyberpunk 2077 has also been delayed! I’m crying as I type this! Developer CD Project Red took to Twitter, where all the news breaks, just earlier today to give the sad news.
Cyberpunk 2077 won’t make the April release window and we’re moving the launch date to September 17, 2020.
It feels bad, but sounds like this may have been the right move. As a wise Shigeru Miyamoto once said, “A delayed game is eventually good, a bad game is bad forever.” While that may not always be the case with the advent of live-service games, I think you see where I’m going with this. So, while the delay bug seems to be affecting lots of big games this Spring, it may be for the best.
Please do also remember, it is very likely that these games were already facing a huge crunch time, as is the unfortunate reality of the games industry. Hopefully, this extra time will give the developers room to breathe, even if just a little. As painful as it may be, if these delays help reduce the overall amount of crunch that developers have to face, and produce a better product out of the gate, then developers should be allowed all the time in the world.
(Clarification: There is no real bug or virus or anything of the sort. I’m sure these games are being fine-tuned and cleared of any bug, delay-inducing or otherwise.)
