Project Cars Gets Delayed Yet Again. Do Companies Need To Stop Announcing Release Dates Willy Nilly?

Slightly Mad Studios forthcoming racing simulation Project Cars has been delayed for the third time in a row. According to a press release by Namco Bandai the game will now arrive on Xbox One, PS4 and PC in mid May. No mention of the planned Wii U version was made.

The game was originally going to be launched back in November of 2014. This latest delay pushes the game back from its original launch window by 6-months.
Slightly Mad Studio’s Ian Bell had this to say:
“Despite our long heritage and pedigree in making critically acclaimed racing games, Project Cars is by far the grandest and most intricately detailed of them all. Despite therefore the game being 99.9 per cent complete, the remaining 0.1 per cent attending to small issues and bugs has been tricky to anticipate.We’re absolutely dedicated to delivering a ground-breaking experience and by targeting mid-May fans can be assured that’s what they’ll receive.Again, we want to thank our fans for their support and patience on this matter. There’s a high expectancy from racing fans around the world that Project Cars is going to be an exciting new contender in the simulation racing space and we firmly believe gamers deserve it to be in its most complete and polished state when they come to play it on day one.

And since the gaming community is our primary focus and has always been at the heart of the project during development, we would like to offer some free content to all players as compensation for this short delay and as acknowledgement of how grateful we are. This gift, that we’re sure is going to excite fans, will be available from day one and revealed shortly. Keep an eye on our website for more info.”

This does once again raise the question of whether companies need to stop announcing release dates so far in advance of launch, though. There’s no faulting a developer for wanting to really polish their game, indeed it’s absolutely praiseworthy, but we’re seeing more and more titles get announced and hyped a year and sometimes even more in advance before then being delayed again and again. Think of Bioshock Infinite which was announced well before it was ever going to be in the hands of consumers, resulting in a huge hype train that had to last for ages as the game was continuously delayed.

Look, it’s incredibly difficult to judge when a project will actually be finished. Five minutes of coding can cook up things which take five months to fix, but it would be nice if publishers started waiting until they had a strong certainty that there game will be finished on time, rather than stating release dates months in advance and then having to announce numerous delays. Project Cars 6-month delay strongly suggests that the game was far from ready for a release date.

There better not be a day one patch.

4 Comments Add yours

Prof.mcstevie says:

March 11, 2015 at 8:33 pm

Optimism is ruining their scheduling, however I wonder if without a optimistic release goal some games won’t get approved or will be stopped mid way through.

Baden Ronie says:

March 11, 2015 at 11:09 pm

You raise a very valid point.

Publishers put a lot of pressure on developers to meet milestones, and doubtless to meet a specific release date, too.

Reply
1. Prof.mcstevie says:
  
  March 12, 2015 at 6:05 pm
  
  They’ll shut your whole project down if you are late without something fantastic to back it up.