Gamers everywhere were rather surprised yesterday when Sega announced via Twitter that Anarchy Reigns, the upcoming online beat ‘em up being developed by Platinum Games, who’re responsible for titles like Vanquish and Bayonetta, has been delayed in Europe and America until Q1 of 2013. Japan, however, will still be getting the game next month on July 5th.
“The release of Anarchy Reigns has been re-evaluated,” SEGA said on their Twitter. “We now expect to launch in Europe and America in Q1 of 2013.”
This announcement comes after last months events where SEGA rather quietly changed Anarchy Reigns western release date from July to, “to be confirmed.”
But it seems like gamers weren’t the only ones surprised by the announcement: Platinum Games didn’t know about it, either, nor are they even sure why the game has been delayed in Europe and America for so long as developement on the game is complete and it’s ready to go. Atsushi Inaba, the big boss over at Platinum, took to his own Twitter account to officially comment on the delay:
“Hi all, I wanted to make official comment on the western release of Anarchy Reigns (known as Max Anarchy in Japan).” said Atsushi. “First of all, we are done with all international versions of Anarchy Reigns. The delay is not due to further development on the game.”
” Also, even though the release dates will be different, the content of both the Japanese and Western versions will be 100% the same.”
“Today’s Q1 2013 release news was the first we’d heard of it. Even if we wanted to, we can’t comment as we’re (still) in the dark officially.”
“There’s some concern that this will push back the Japanese release date. It will not. The game will be released in Japan on July 5, 2012.”
“Finally, I want to sincerely apologize to all the fans worldwide for all the confusion this situation has caused.”
“though we are the game’s developers, we can only do so much about this”
“However, we hope you can continue to support Anarchy Reigns and look forward to playing it with us in the future. Thank you.”
While Platinum never come out and say it directly, you can clearly see through these messages that they aren’t exactly happy with SEGA at the moment, and for damn good reason.
So, why the delay? Presumably SEGA believe that a launch in Q1 of 2013 will be better for the game, raking in more sales than a July release, although given that July is relatively quiet, that, to me, seems a bit daft. However, until SEGA make an official comment, we’re all left in the dark as to their reasons.
But the bigger story here is that the games publisher for Europe and America, SEGA, failed to inform the games developers that their title had been delayed at all, let alone for such a long time. That’s a true WTF! moment right there.
However, if you’re still desperate to get your hands on the game then you’ll be happy to know that the full English translation of the game is on the disc that’s shipping out to Japan, so you can import it. Keep in mind, though, that importing can be expensive.
So, what’s your thoughts on this one? I, for one, have been looking forward to Platinums latest title for some time and am struggling to understand the logic behind SEGA’s decision to delay the title.
