Rumor: BioWare’s ‘Anthem’ is probably delayed until 2019, so we all know how this is probably going to go

Yesterday, Kotaku dropped an expose about BioWare’s upcoming game Anthem. Nestled within the story was the news that the game is delayed until 2019. But wait, it gets better! The title must also be released no later than March of that year, due to fiscal calendars and shit. Oh, Electronic Arts. Masters of setting studios up to fail.

Rock Paper Shotgun:

While BioWare’s new sci-fi persistent open-world multiplayer shooter doodad Anthem is officially due to launch this autumn, several secret sources tell Kotaku that the game is now likely delayed into early 2019. Speaking anonymously (the industry is not remotely fond of leakers, after all), they say that BioWare are shifting almost everyone to focus on Anthem, and… there are more whispers about the game’s progress, but they get vaguer. Let’s simply say: it seems quite possible we won’t get to rocket around an alien planet in BioWare’s Iron Man armour this year.

So! According to several of Kotaku’s sources, Anthem won’t be ready for autumn and is instead due in early 2019. Kotaku speculate that it’d be by the end of March 2019. One source told the site that they believed autumn was never really a realistic goal. EA are pushing many people from other BioWare projects, like the mysterious next Dragon Age game, to help finish up, sources say. Shifting people between projects is fairly common with big companies, especially when their other big game hasn’t even been properly announced yet.

Beyond that, Kotaku report that several of their sources expressed concern about the state of the game, worries about whether their own persistent open-world live-content-o-rama will face similar growing pains and backlash to Activision’s Destiny 2 (I can answer that: on the hell we know as the Internet, yes, sorry, absolutely), and other undelighted thoughts. I’ll point you to Kotaku if you want to know more and not get too much into it myself because ah, a lot of that is fairly common for big video games.

Even some fantastic games have seemed doomed to people working on them. Amy Hennig, the director of the first three Uncharted games, only the other week talked about how most of Naughty Dog’s games “looked like they weren’t going to come together until maybe two or three months before we finished them.” Devs fretting about the state of a game potentially a year before launch doesn’t necessarily mean it’s doomed. I mean, it doesn’t mean it’s not. But it’s not as straightforward as it might seem.