Horizon Forbidden West has reportedly been delayed until the first quarter of 2022, according to a new Bloomberg -report.
This would push the Horizon Forbidden West release date from its previous window in late 2021, which delays another one of the games that Sony introduced for the PS5. Although the developer Guerrilla Games never gave a specific launch date for the game, its executives suggested the game would come out this year, and the company tweeted in May that “development is on track”.
Medan GamesBeats Jeff Grubb reported that Sony was considering whether to postpone the launch of the game, now Bloomberg’s source confirms that the publisher has really postponed it.
Sony has delayed the PlayStation exclusive Horizon Forbidden West to the first quarter of 2022, a source tells Bloomberg, confirming a rumor shared by @JeffGrubb yesterday. The latest in the video game industry’s cascade of 2021 delays https://t.co/8atrR25oxdJuly 30, 2021
–
AAA Game Delays: Regular or Covid-Related?
The Bloomberg report did not say why the game’s release date was postponed, but it would be the latest in a series of AAA titles that have been postponed to give studios more time – no later than June after God of War: Ragnarok managed until 2022.
It is difficult to determine if these upcoming games have been specifically delayed due to covid-related issues or if they are just delays that are typical of the video game industry. It’s easy to imagine why lockdown and teleworking could slow down game development, but studios suddenly seem to have become shy about naming Covid as a cause of delays.
In April 2020, for example, we were told that it was the pandemic that was behind the delays of the new ones The Last of Us 2and Death Strandingeditions, while in August we received confirmation that both Deathloop and Halo Infinite delayed until 2022. But in early 2021, studios and publishers returned to more general and unclear causes of delays, as with Sony’s Outriders and the openworld game Gotham Knights.
So what has changed? It is possible that the video game industry felt that players’ sympathies regarding Covid delays may have diminished, but there may also be another reason: Cyberpunk 2077, which was launched in December 2020 with so many game-destroying bugs that it was removed from the Sony PS4 store. Developer CD Projekt Reds CEO promised by June 2021 at the latest, that the game’s team would continue to fix problems until the game would “live up to what was promised.”
In other words, it’s worth postponing a game for a few months or a year and risking some annoying player to avoid releasing a game full of bugs, which still do not live up to expectations six months later.
–
