“Awesome takes time,” the ever-ebullient Dax Ginn recently told a group of reporters in explaining why his studio’s new Batman game, the first from Rocksteady since 2011, is no longer scheduled for a late-2014 release.
If this news sounds a wee bit familiar, it’s because a whole bunch of games seem to be slipping to 2015. The Witcher 3 just did. The Order: 1886. Mad Max. The Division. Even Valve’s Steam Machines seem to be slipping.
In an era of annual Call of Duty and Assassin’s Creed games, this might seem a bit weird, but those mega-franchises tend to rotate development studios, a change even the Arkham games appeared to switch to to enable a 2013 release of the WB Montreal-developed Batman: Arkham Origins.
We at Kotaku first saw Arkham Knight running in March. The game is set in a big open-world swath of Gotham City. The game’s creators, playing on a PC build, appeared to be able to glide and drive through large sections of it at will. There were framerate hitches, which is common in unfinished games. Those seemed to be getting resolved when we saw the game again in May. But Rocksteady apparently needs more time.
“Now Batman: Arkham Knight is totally awesome,” Ginn told us in May, under embargo. “The thing about awesome, though, is awesome takes time. And totally awesome takes a lot of time. So in collaboration with our colleagues at Warner Bros Interactive Entertainment and DC Comics, we have decided to extend the development time of Batman: Arkham Knight. Now, the very simple reason for doing this is to ensure we are delivering the awesome level of quality that Batman fans and gamers expect from this, the final episode and the epic conclusion to the Rocksteady Arkham trilogy. The Dark Knight will face his ultimate challenge in Batman: Arkham Knight now to be released in 2015.”
Arkham Knight wasn’t just one of the biggest games planned for late 2014. It was also one of the first major third-party games to be announced to be only shipping for new-gen hardware. No PS3. No Xbox 360. Just PS4, Xbox One and PC.
For those dying for a Batman game this year, Lego Batman 3 is still slated for a late 2014 release.
Sorry, folks, but 2015 is the new 2014. You’ll have to tide yourself over with a smaller slate of games this Christmas than expected. Hopefully there’ll be some greats in the mix. And hopefully all these delays make the delayed games awesomer.
Comments
15 responses to “Batman: Arkham Knight Delayed To 2015”
“totally awesome takes a lot of time…”
Why not just say the project is running behind schedule and wont be completed until 2015? I hate when companies talk to gamers like theyre idiots.
Chill out dude, it’s pretty obvious that’s the case.
If they just said that you’d have people wanting to know if there were major development issues or something.
Aww… No new Batman? Maybe I will check out Cold, Cold Heart after all.
I smell a conspiracy.
Cold Cold Heart was pretty decent. I may be a bit biased as I got the Season Pass for free though. Maybe wait until the Season Pass is on sale.
Oh well, gives me more time to buy or build a system that can run it.
Bugger. Definitely looking forward to this one. I’d rather they take their time though.
Nooooooo!
Ah well , as long as it turns out awesome.
So will there be anything to play in 2014? The games industry might be having an Imagination Christmas this year.
Destiny? A lot of my hopes rest on that.
Late edit: Civ: Beyond Earth for my strat fix too.
I suppose the optimistic assessment (and we’ll know more at E3) isn’t that 2015 is the new 2014, but that 2015 is the new 2007.
It took about 18 months from the time the Xbox 360 came out in late 2005 until it hit its stride.
Then in the back half of 2007 we got Halo 3, Assassins Creed, Bioshock and Mass Effect within a few months and the generation really started going.
It’ll be around this time next year that we should get an avalanche on cool new-gen games that will hopefully be unrestrained by being multiplatform with the last-gen and hopefully, as was the case with games like AC, of a scope that would have been impossible under old hardware.
That said Destiny looks pretty awesome.
called it
Too bad game companies can’t be punished for putting out an early release date that they then backtrack on. I think it would be fare to make them reduce the game by $5 that way game companies would only publish a release date when the game is ready!
Although if Watch Dags is any indication the more you delay it the more people will buy it. 😛
Fun fact: The longer a game takes to complete the more it costs to make.
*bows*
Please understand
Hey at least it’s not an annualised series though! As it is I’m still finishing Arkham City (I’m onto the third Catwoman mission) so there’s no pressure from me!
Meanwhile in 2014 ….. ….. ….. …..