It's a weird year for video games as coronavirus-driven delays sweep through the industry. Here's every major date change that's been announced so far.
If you’ve had a sinking feeling that 2021 has been light on games, you’re not wrong: We’re witnessing one of the most delay-heavy years in gaming’s history. In our 2021 predictions, we noted that this was a very real possibility due to the long-term effects of the COVID-19 pandemic. While some of 2020’s releases got shuffled around, those games were largely near the end of their development cycle. The real worry was what the pandemic would mean for games that weren’t quite as far along.
Axiom Verge 2 Axiom Verge 2 was one of the most anticipated indies of the year. The Metroidvania-style game is a long-awaited sequel to a beloved 2015 classic. It was such a hot commodity that Epic snatched it up as a PC exclusive via the Epic Games Store. However, its release date changed several times before it actually released. It was initially supposed to launch in 2020 before being pushed to the first half of 2021. Then it was delayed again, to the third quarter of 2021.
Kena: Bridge of Spirits Not every delay has been a major push. Some games have experienced smaller delays to allow developers more time to polish the final product. That’s pretty standard in the gaming world, and you’d expect to see schedule shifts like that regardless of a health crisis. Kena: Bridge of Spirits is a good example of that. The charming adventure game was originally set to release on August 23, but it got a short, one-month delay. It eventually launched on September 21.
Battlefield 2042 Battlefield 2042 is a huge game. It features the series’ biggest maps yet and will support 128-player matches on next-gen consoles and PC . All that considered, it’s understandable that Ripple Effect would need a few extra weeks to finish it. Citing complications with the pandemic as a main reason for the delay, Battlefield 2042 will now launch on November 19.
Rainbow Six Extraction It’s been a long road for the next installment in the Rainbow Six series. The shooter was originally scheduled to launch during the holiday 2020 season. At the time, it was titled Rainbow Six Quarantine — a title that quickly became awkward as the pandemic forced the world into lockdown. We wouldn’t see the game again until E3 2021, where Ubisoft gave it a grand reveal. The newly named Rainbow Six Extraction was set to be a big fall release, landing on September 16.
Destiny 2: The Witch Queen Last summer, Bungie announced an ambitious and thorough plan for the next few years of Destiny 2. The developer planned to drop three major expansions, one each year until 2022, starting with 2020’s Beyond Light. This year, the plan was to continue that expansion’s story with The Witch Queen, but now those plans are changing.
Lego Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga Even Lego isn’t safe from delays. With the game calendar clearing out, Lego Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga was shaping up to be one of the more delightful releases this spring. It never got a firm release date, though, which started looking like a red flag the deeper we got into March. TT Games announced that it would no longer make its spring window and was moving the game. No new release window was given at the time.
God of War When Sony officially revealed the PS5 in 2020, it made a lot of big promises. We saw games like Marvel’s Spider-Man: Miles Morales and Horizon Forbidden West, which set some gargantuan expectations about the console’s first year. The most eyebrow-raising moment came when Sony revealed a sequel to 2018’s God of War. Despite only getting a logo reveal, Sony placed a 2021 release date on it, which seemed unrealistic at the time.
Resident Evil Re:Verse Miraculously, Resident Evil Village made its planned May 7 release date with no delay. That’s an increasingly rare feat among big studio productions this year. Unfortunately, the same can’t be said for Resident Evil Re:Verse. The multiplayer game was supposed to launch the same day as Village, but now it was quickly pushed back to a vague summer 2021 window, which became a slightly less vague July 2021 window.
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