2022; the year of game delays

55 and counting…

Image edited of on made by GameRant.

When we left 2021 behind and looked towards the horizon of 2022, it looked like it would be a killer year for gaming. With Covid on its way out and lots of people and companies now having found a groove when it comes to working at home, some even starting to get back to their offices. Plus: 2022 was looking stacked and I was excited about it. Horizon Forbidden West, Elden Ring, Hogwarts Legacy, God of War Ragnarök, the sequel to Breath of the Wild, Forspoken, Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League, Advance Wars 1+2: Reboot Camp, not to mention the title that had yet to be announced.

Now, with the last quarter of the year looming, it is quite clear that 2022 didn’t go as planned. Over half of the games I just mentioned have been delayed and, 9 months in, the number of delays is almost the same as 2021’s. Lots of people have called 2022 a ‘bad’, ‘disappointing’ and/or ‘empty’. A ‘down’ year. While I can get into the latter, I disagree with the former.

Let’s take a look at why we’re still seeing this number of game delays and why I think this year is still a good one for gaming. Assuming you’re not an Xbox 1st party gamer.

Let’s dive in.

The normal reasons for delays

Let´s first do a quick dive into the how and why of delays when nothing special is going on. Game delays are nothing new. In fact, they happen in basically every development cycle. We, the public, just never hear about them. Game development is like a rollercoaster; things can go fast at one moment before coming to a grinding halt a moment after. Based on progress and some external factor that I’ll dive in momentarily, it’s common for the internal date to shift around before one is set in stone. You can see this happen in the ‘Raising Kratos’ documentary. 

There goes a lot in the decision of when to release the game. It’s not just a matter of ‘based on development, this is when we have the game ready. The big studios work with analysts to crunch a ton of data to figure out what the optimal time to release their game is. From the adoption rate of the consoles, how many people have a PS5 right now and can thus buy our title, to spending habits, could we use the holiday season to push sales? and more. Changing a decision made with this much work behind is tough. Not only would you have to redo all this work but you might not find that perfect release window again.

Not to mention a delay, after a release date is decided upon, has consequences all across the chain. A delay means old marketing material is no longer valid and doesn’t just need to be replaced but taken out of circulation. Self-space of a brick-and-mortar store and deals with digital storefront owners need to be renegotiated, not to mention that said store owners probably aren’t happy that the big launch they were working towards is coming later. It could lead to trouble with factories that produce the discs and whatnot. They might not have the time to produce the goods in the new timeframe as they already have another order lined up for that window. I think you get the point by now. There are lots of consequences to delaying a game. Lots of potentially expensive things.

It´s this reason why game delays don´t happen even if, based on the state of the game, the product you´re shipping out is just bad. Delaying the title would mean spending more money, paying the developers and all of the stuff I mentioned above. Pushing the game out, even if it´s not ready, and taking the financial and PR hit for shipping an unfinished title is deemed more profitable than the strain the delay would cause. 

Covid troubles/The fallout of Covid

The reasons for so many games still getting delayed is quite simple: Covid. Isn’t Covid on its way out and people getting back to the office like you just said? Yes, but that doesn’t mean game development is back on track.

What a lot of developers learned is that productivity from working at home differs wildly based on not only the team you have but the stage you’re at in the development cycle. when you’re putting in the final touches when there’s a clear path forward and you can tick off tasks from a checklist you can get quite a bit done from home. When you’re in the creative phase when you try to nail down a concept the loss of that personal contact is really felt.

When did you have a more fruitful brainstorming session? Online over Zoom or when everyone was sitting in the same room? Yeah, same here. That’s a problem one of the interviewees mentioned. That when it comes to R&D, working on it from home tanked productivity. A lot of the games that launched early in the pandemic, 2020/2021, were pretty far in development and in the ‘checklist’ phase. Games that are starting to come out these days weren’t that far ahead or might not have even been in development before the pandemic and thus faced challenges like this. This, in turn, led to more delays.

Covid hasn´t only done ‘damage’ to the industry thankfully. In an article by Game Industry, a developer mentions that delaying a game has become somewhat easier though. Well, when it comes to convincing the higher-ups, that is. After recent controversies such as the disastrous launch of Cyberpunk 2077 and even the disappointing sales and reception of the ‘covid years’ annual Call of Duty the head honchos have learned that rushing a game out the door with a ‘we’ll fix it later' mentality doesn’t always work. You can only make one 1st impression after all and games, like movies, tend to be frontloaded when it comes to sales.

Cyberpunk has to be the 'beware' story when it comes to rushed releases. CD Projekt Red has done a lot to make the game better but it'll never wear its launch down.

Lots of delays, but still lots of games

That’s, rather briefly, the explanation behind the delays. If you want to know more I advise you to read the articles yourself but now it’s time for the ‘my opinion’ part of the article. When talking about gaming in 2022, lots of people say it’s a ‘bad’ year. That there was barely any game coming out. 

I disagree. There have been lots of 3rd party titles, like Elden Ring, and indie releases, like Cult of the Lamb and even the 1st party studios, have had big releases. 

In the latter category, Nintendo did the best. Pokémon Legends: Arceus, Xenoblade Chronicles 3, Kirby and the Forgotten Land, Splatoon 3 just to name a few with more, like Pokémon Scarlet & Violet, still to come. 

Sony has had less 1st party releases, but they were all good hitters. Horizon Forbidden West, thanks to the bundle I must add, is still selling. We also had Gran Turismo 7 and Stray, while God of War Ragnarök is due in only 2 months. 

I admit that it's perhaps not the number of games people wanted but 1st party-wise we’ve still got a good number of games. The only exception is Xbox. 2022 has had 0 1st party Xbox games and with Redfall and Starfield’s delay, there won’t be any Xbox 1st party title this year. Xbox might have 3rd party support and Game Pass but some things never change and 1st party releases are still the motor of the gaming industry. Their absence is strongly felt. 

..........

With the ramifications of Covid and real-world events, game development is still troubled. 2022 has seen a lot of games delayed, both to later in the year to 2023 or beyond. The year isn´t even over and we´re already getting close to the total amount of game delays for 2021. I think it´s undeniable that the pace at least, of game delays in 2022 is higher than in 2021. Nintendo pushed its biggest hitter, The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, to 2023 while Xbox pushed all of its 1st party titles to the next year leaving Microsoft with no big hitters for the year.

Even so, I disagree that 2022 is a ‘bad’ or ‘empty’ year. We’ve had good releases, both early in the year and still to come. As long as you’re not an Xbox gamer who's there for the 1st parties, I don’t think you’ve dined badly this year. There’s just a little less on the table.