The Biggest Game Delays Of 2022

Remakes of the beloved Game Boy Advance strategy games were supposed to grace the Switch this past spring. Instead, Nintendo revealed the game wouldn’t come out as scheduled due to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. It was finished, but the Mario maker felt the subject matter was inappropriate given the context. Who among us hasn’t confused grid based combat between monochromatic cartoon armies with war crimes?

Reason for delay: “recent world events”

New release date: TBD

You could be forgiven for thinking that Dead Island 2, a zombie slasher originally revealed back at E3 2014, was canceled long ago. Not so. Deep Silver announced at this year’s Gamescom that it would finally be coming out in the back half of 2022 after years of delays, swapping developers, and prolonged radio silence. Then it was delayed again. “The irony of delaying Dead Island 2 is not lost on us, and we are as disappointed as you undoubtedly are,” the publisher wrote last month. Notably, the decision came shortly after the news that Saints Row had sold poorly due to its busted state at launch.

Reason for delay: “make sure we can launch a game we’re proud to launch”

New release date: April 28th 2023

It’s been a bleak year for mega publisher Ubisoft. It’s the first time we’ve gone more than two years without an Assassin’s Creed game since the series began, and several other projects were canceled or delayed. Skull & Bones was one of them. Born from an Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag expansion, the pirate survival game has spent years in development hell. Shortly after the game was shown at Ubisoft’s big summer showcase, the game was delayed yet again to address playtest concerns before it makes it into the wild.

Reason for delay: “polishing and balancing”

New release date: March 9, 2023

A Soviet take on Fallout, first-person shooter Atomic Heart has looked terrific in every trailer maker Mundfish has released so far. There are laser weapons, buzzsaws, and telekinetic powers. Announced years ago, and not without rumblings of a chaotic development process, the game finally got a release date earlier this year. By November, however, publisher Focus Entertainment announced a new release date in 2023 without officially acknowledging the delay. The killer robots, and whether this game will set my PC on fire, will have to wait.

Reason for delay: Unknown

New release date: February 21, 2023

Warner Bros.’s Harry Potter adaptation about fighting trolls while attending wizarding school seemed on pace to come out this holiday season. In mid-August, however, the publisher pulled the plug on that plan. Maybe the game wasn’t performing well on Switch, one of the many platforms it’s coming to, or maybe the studio just thought it could buy some more time for transphobic muggle and royal TERF, J. K. Rowling, to sign away royalty rights disappear into the wilderness.

Reason for delay: “more time to deliver the best possible game experience”

New release date: February 10, 2023

A sequel to the beloved 2016 indie thriller six years in the making, there are high hopes for Oxenfree II. It will also be an early test for Netflix’s foray into gaming. The streaming service bought creator Night School Studio in September. Maybe all of the Bridgerton and Squid Games money bought the devs some extra runaway. Night School announced the delay shortly before the sale.

Reason for delay: “to make Oxenfree II truly special and add more localizations”

New release date: 2023

I’m still not exactly sure what this game is, but Square Enix is really hyped about it. Outside of the cringe interviews and bad dialogue, it looks like there might be a fun action adventure game filled with parkour and magic at the heart of Forspoken. It was supposed to be one of the big fall 2022 blockbusters. Then out of nowhere the Final Fantasy maker put the breaks on after “ongoing discussions with key partners.” As a PS5 console exclusive, that partner was probably Sony. Maybe it wanted Square to re-record some of the voice acting.

Reason for delay: “strategic decision”

New release date: January 24, 2023

Last year, it was announced that the “perfect RTS” was getting another sequel after nearly a decade. PC gamers and strategy nerds rejoiced. Taking the series’ brass-tacks tactics to the Mediterranean, there was the hope Company of Heroes 3 would compensate for the flaws of the second game. It already had an Alpha build. But 2022 was not to be. Sega and Relic Games delivered the bad news in October saying the game was still kind of busted. Bummer!

Reason for delay: “bugs to squash, pixels to polish, gameplay to adjust, and feedback to address”

New release date: February 23, 2023

If I were releasing a video game adaptation of the highest grossing movie ever, whose long-awaited sequel was finally coming out in 2022, I would try really hard not to miss that window. Alas, Ubisoft is gonna Ubisoft. Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora has been in the works at Ubisoft Massive, the studio behind The Division games, for some time. Apparently it still needed more. Despite announcing a release window of 2022 at last year’s E3, CEO Yves Guillemot delivered the unfortunate news during an earnings call a few months back that it would slip to 2023. Ubisoft release a game challenge 2023 edition here we come.

Reason for delay: “to take full advantage of next-gen technology”

New release date: TBD

It’s been years since the first rocket ship sim blew up on Steam Early Access. A decade later fans are still waiting for the sequel. The reason why is less of a mystery. Development has been all over the place. Kerbal Space Program was bought by Take-Two in 2017. A rebranded Uber Entertainment, responsible for the Planetary Annihilation Kickstarter debacle, was hired to work on it. Instead of acquiring the studio, Take-Two later poached its staff and set up to finish the game in-house with involvement of some of the original team. In 2020, Kerbal Space Program 2 got a release window of 2022. Earlier this year, it was delayed until 2023. A couple months ago that release date turned into an Early Access date. Hopefully escape velocity gets achieved someday.

Reason for delay: “additional time to ensure we hit the quality and level of polish it deserves”

New release date: February 24, 2023

This is a tragic one. Previously planned as one of Xbox’s big console exclusives for the year, S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2, a successor to the beloved paranormal survival horror PC game, was derailed by more than just mismanagement, corporate politics, or bugs. The studio behind it, GSC Game World, is based in Kiev which continues to be bombarded in Russia’s war on Ukraine. While many of the team have relocated, others remained behind, and some even joined to fight in the war. A new release date at this point is the least of anyone’s concern.

Reason for delay: war atrocities

New release date: TBD

Arkane Austin’s here-based loot shooter about fighting vampires in New England would have been a great October game. The recently-purchased Microsoft studio decided to delay the totally not-a-mashup of Left 4 Dead and Borderlands until early 2023. That left the Xbox manufacturer with a gaping hole in the summer release schedule. Hopefully the wait turns out to be worth it. Acclaimed director Harvey Smith said the team needed the extra time to deliver on its most ambitious project yet.

Reason for delay: “more time to bring the game to life”

New release date: 2023

Bethesda’s long-awaited space RPG was delayed the same day as Redfall. It was hard to believe considering the studio had the “11.11.22” date picked out for months. But it turns out Todd Howard and co. needed the extra months to add thousands of more lines of dialogue to the game and hopefully corral its seemingly sprawling intra-galactic adventure into the type of thing Elder Scrolls and Fallout fans have been pining for. “These decisions are hard on teams making the games & our fans,” Microsoft Gaming CEO Phil Spencer said at the time. “While I fully support giving teams time to release these great games when they are ready, we hear the feedback.” If Starfield’s anything like Skyrim, once it finally releases we’ll never see the end of it.

Reason for delay: “incredible ambition”

New release date: 2023

Rocksteady Studios revealed its none-Batman successor to the Arkham trilogy in 2020. Players would take the reigns of super villains who had so far failed to launch a coup in movie form at the box office. Superman would be the big bad, or whatever was controlling him. Amidst the intrigue, the studio announced that the game would join the growing list of blockbusters to skip 2022. It’s now expected in early 2023, but clear plans have yet to materialize. “Thanks for your patience,” creative director Sefton Hill told fans back in March.

Reason for delay: “making the best game we can”

New release date: 2023

I’ve never actually played a Homeworld game before, but man does Homeworld 3 look super rad. The real-time strategy spaceship porn game where complex 3D ballistics is at the heart of two giant metal caskets blowing each other up. We learned we were getting a third game in the storied PC franchise in 2019. A gameplay trailer looked great in 2021. The devs even ditched their weird pyramid funding scheme. We didn’t get the game as promised this year, but we did get a snappy new trailer. The release date was pushed back to avoid crunch.

Reason for delay: “make good on our commitment to quality in a healthy and sustainable way”

New release date: 2023

It’s hard to imagine at this point, but early on 2022 was shaping up to possibly be one of the best years in gaming in a long time. The stars were aligning, and so were the tears. The kingdom’s tears to be exact. Nintendo finally seemed poised to deliver another breakthrough Zelda game on time. The investor presentations and trailers all kept listing it as “Coming 2022.” But it never came. Instead, it got a new name and a delay.

Tears of the Kingdom, which grew out of a Breath of the Wild DLC idea, will by the time it arrives next year, have taken just as long as Breath of the Wild did following Skyward Sword’s belated debut on the Wii. On the bright side, we could potentially be getting two franchise-defining Zelda games on a single console generation. A big achievement for Nintendo but an absolutely miserable prospect for the rapidly aging graphics chip powering my Switch.

Reason for delay: “in order to make this game’s experience something special”

New release date: May 5, 2023