EA said today that BioWare’s Anthem will be out in early 2019, confirming our report last week that the upcoming multiplayer action game will not make it this year.
“It’s not a delay,” EA’s Blake Jorgensen told the Wall Street Journal, despite the publisher previously announcing the game for a spring release. Merriam-Webster defines “delay” as “the act of postponing, hindering, or causing something to occur more slowly than normal.”
The coming year will be critical for BioWare. The prestigious RPG developer has essentially become a one-game studio as it works on Anthem, and pressure is mounting. For more, read our story from last week.
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40 responses to “BioWare’s Anthem Officially Delayed To 2019”
lmao
Probably rebalancing the game economy to be less reliant on microtransactions for progress unlocking content.
Or going balls-deep on that since EA seems to be intent on shoehorning it into everything.
perhaps they’re waiting for a gambling license?
Kinda surprised it was originally planned to be released this year. What we saw of it at E3 seemed like the kind of vertical slice/demo we see there often for games that are a few years away from release. Pretty and cool but not a whole lot there that suggests the majority of the actual game has been made.
Well that was E3 last year, so it would have been 1.5 years from then until its original release and now its closer to two years, plus the mechanics and design all seemed pretty far along. Doesnt seem too far fetched to me, especially with the multiple studios they have moved onto it.
Doesn’t matter how much they delay it, the game is still going to be a flop.
Why do you say that NegZ? It’s essentially Halo/Destiny, and that’s a style that’s been shown to work for near on 20 years.
Flop suggests its just not going to sell, so what makes you think that’ll be the case?
For the exact reason you describe. There’s nothing wrong with making a Destiny clone per se, but it runs completely counter to Bioware’s usual style, because the shared-world stuff effectively kills their greatest strength, which is strong, single-player story.
It looks perfectly okay, but it’s the exact opposite of what I and a lot of other people want from Bioware. They have an uphill battle actually convincing their base that it’s even made for them at all, which is a problem.
Then couple that with the fact that EA has terrible perception problems right now, and it feels very much stacked against it being a success.
Personally I’ve been playing Bioware’s stuff since before they started doing RPGs – I have a copy of Shattered Steel on CD somewhere still, I think – and Anthem is the first time I’ve just been utterly uninterested. I know I’m not alone in this either.
It’s got all the hallmarks of an expensive flop from what I can see. And the sad thing is it’ll probably take Bioware down with it.
I can’t +1 you due to being a guest, but you’re spot on.
I was just having this conversation yesterday with some long time Bioware fans. Unless they can somehow pull off the “traditional Bioware storytelling experience” in Anthem, it’s just not going to be a game that interests their fans who are fans of Baldur’s Gate, Dragon Age, Mass Effect and (to a lesser extent) SWTOR.
Anthem just sounds like a completely different style of game, and it might even be a good implementation of the Destiny/Division style game.. but it won’t be what a lot of people want from Bioware, and sales numbers might reflect that.
Unfortunately I don’t think Bioware wants their fans anymore
If they can make it an open world single player RPG, but some of the people you encounter in the PvE area are humans instead of NPCs, I’ll be very interested. It’s the closest I’m ever going to get to another emergent world like the Stalker games.
99% sure that’s not the game they’re making though. Certainly not the game they pitched in their fake vertical slice at E3.
True enough, they pitched co-op. But I’m hoping that it’s a single player campaign that can be played in co-op or not depending on your mood. Like Borderlands or Torchlight 2.
No, they pitched a ‘shared world’ shooter. Which is why everyone is making the Destiny comparison since it’s the highest profile example of one of those.
Even that wouldn’t bother me if they did it right. But they won’t.
It looks like the actual systems used for play are pretty good. The exploring looks cool and fun. The seamless movement from air to ground to water looks great. The enemies shitting loot as they die is great.
I hope they are using this time to seriously retool the whole thing and make it less MMO and more RPG.
I wandered out for lunch, and by the time I got back what I was typing wouldn’t have made sense 🙂
I hear you, and what you say makes perfect sense. But when I look at who Bioware are today, I don’t see it myself. Firstly, Bioware itself has Mass Effect in its history. Secondly, the Austin group has SWTOR behind them, and thirdly, Mythic is in there, along with their MMO history.
I don’t think its a massive stretch to see them work a Destiny style game myself. Its not a massive leap of faith given the combined experience being put into it.
That doesn’t mean it will work. But it also doesn’t mean they’re going in blind. For that, I’m willing to give them the benefit of the doubt until we start getting real feedback from people playing the beta. Until then, we’re all guessing.
In the end, it wont really matter until then anyway. We all have an opinion, and our reasons for it, but those opinions don’t mean jack until at least beta. At that point, its either a buggy dud (or lootbox style PR disaster), a Destiny type game that’s fun until you get caught in bad business decisions (is that still a dud if it sells millions?), or it works spectacularly, and the world is a happy place.
The combined skills of those across the sites are enough that I hope for the latter, but the idiots running EA these days also make me worry that its going to fail, and take Bioware with it. As I wont need to spend any money on it for a good while, I prefer to be optimistic though.
I’m with you on this one, bioware has an ardent following for one reason – they have made excellent story driven RPGs with great production values for many years, going waaay back. Arguably the best in the genre when only AAA is considered. And for some reason they’re now making an entry into a genre which is counter to their normal player base, appears utterly generic in terms of concept and atmosphere, has not typically been wildly successful commercially (see: every sci-fi MMO ever, Titanfall, destiny 2, division), and already had a market leader that at best you can steal partial market share from (destiny).
DEAR GAME DEVELOPERS – YOU CANT CONVERT EXISTING FANS OF ONE GENRE INTO EQUAL NUMBERS OF FANS OF ANOTHER GENRE. Honestly the vast majority never pay to play, never purchase microtransactions – be wooed by these hopes of making a successful subscription based game but know most of us will take our money elsewhere, and you are taking a *risk*
‘Not a delay’ well we have a frontrunner for best spin of 2018.
From the company that bought you the 2017 Meme of the Year: “Pride and accomplishment”
It’s not a delay, it’s a temporary availability adjustment.
Sounds like they are mirroring destiny’s development schedule as well
Getting moved to 2019 to incorporate loot boxes.
Wrong. It always had loot boxes. It’s being delayed to let the loot box sh*tstorm die down a bit first 😉
Uh my mistake, carry on then.
Dead on arrival!
FFS, Jorgensen!!
It’s a delay you PR slinging snake oil spruiker.
RIP BioWare =(
And it still won’t be finished at release. EA you bunch of goons………
Seriously if this doesn’t do well, Bioware may become another studio destroyed by EA. EA seem to have a pretty low tolerance and will abandoned a studio pretty easily. So it’s in everyone’s best interest to want this to succeed, for Bioware’s sake.
I was pretty certain they had already been destroyed by EA and were just a soulless husk at this point.
Given how Mass Effect Andromeda really needed a 6 month delay, I see this as EA simply wanting to make sure they don’t have a repeat.
When i first heard about Anthem I was keen as a jelly bean to check it out but the further it developed and the more I heard about EA’s current situation the sadder I got.
From the reading iv done so far it sounds like a make or break game for that particular studio so they really need it to be a success.
Honestly i’m really hoping for good things especially after all the recent Destiny 2 debacles
After andromeda i dont care much for bioware games
I wish I was still waiting for Andromeda.
1/ It might not have been as shit if I’d had to wait.
2/ I’ll have to wait longer for a sequel now because the last one failed.
3/….. not that I care anymore.
I’d rather a game be delayed so they can finish it properly than have it rushed to be out “on time”. Kotaku had an article not that long ago about games coming out when they didn’t work properly, and then being patched after release. If that’s my alternative option, I’ll take a delay in release thanks.
I’m also not willing to judge a game that hasn’t even come out yet. I’m looking forward to Anthem, and I’ll decide if it’s good or not when I’ve actually played it.
This. Reading about BioWare’s employees being worried about the reception of the game, and that they’ll be hard pressed to finish it before end 2018, this must be a small relief.
I’m disappointed, but still looking forward to it. Hopefully it will be great.
Personally I would rather a game be delayed so the finished product is released and not behind paid DLC.
Development of games appears to be so spread out and outsourced to other areas that in these situations there is rarely a cohesive product at the end of it, read: Aliens CM, Andromeda, to name a couple.
The studio coming together as a whole appears promising, although I’m not holding any hopes it’ll live up to the massive expectations generated by the tech demo we’ve seen.
Well shit. This is one of the few games i was interested in this year sadly. Im gonna hold out hope for halo 6. Well at least it gives me time to play games i havent finished yet.