Marvel's Midnight Suns Pushed Back to Second Half of 2022

Plenty of time to remove the card-based mechanics 😛

First of many delayed out of that window. Will only make the game better!

Taking bets what gets delayed next next year i say Saints Row, or Elden Ring will get moved from February to July.

Take your time, we'll all be busy anyways.

Meh didn’t look interesting anyways

@nessisonett you’re right! DICE ROLLING MECHANICS IS WHERE ITS AT!
ESCALATORS! ESCALATORS! ESCALATORS! rolls eels DAMMIT!

@danzoEX It’s basically how I feel playing XCOM anyway.

I don't care how much better the game gets, anyone who gives a release date that doesn't get met needs to be publicly exposed and apologize. It happens all the time now, why lie, just say "not soon" or something vague. It's ridiculous and they should be embarrassed. 😝

@rjejr That's a bit much.

@RedKnight34 il say saints row will be delayed. Dying Light 2 and Elden Ring were already delayed to Feb so another delay could hurt them. Cant see horizon moving unless April has space. If it moves to march it will again have another exclusive (GT7) to compete with

@Iver I think Forbidden West is a lock. The others meanwhile, wouldn't surprise me. Dying light 2 feels like it has another delay in it - and i wouldn't be surprised to see Elden Ring delayed. Saints Row will surely get bumped

@Iver "I don't think they owe anything to anybody"

That's the problem with the world, common courtesy is gone, lieing is expected, nobody owes anybody the truth so we all just lie and it's fine and dandy. 🤷‍♂️

If game delays were a rare occurrence than fine, something happens like the flood that wiped out the No Man Skies dev, or Nintendo decided Metroid Prime 4 wasn't good enough so they started over - though that's actually ok, no date was given - but then so many games are delayed why lie about a date that isn't going to be made? Square Enix had an hour long live show with a full orchestra just to give the release date for FFXV. Then a few months later they delayed the game. Maybe if they spend as much time finishing the game as holding a live event the game would have released when they said it would it. 😝

OK, that last sentence was sarcasm, obviously 1 thing had nothing to do w/ the other.

https://www.pushsquare.com/news/2016/03/live_watch_uncovered_final_fantasy_xv_live_right_here

https://www.pushsquare.com/news/2016/08/square_enix_officially_delays_final_fantasy_xv_to_29th_november

I mean if you have Gamestop putting new dates on signs you made, well that date should have never been announced in the first place. What a joke.

@LiamCroft Why is it a bit much, lieing is ok now? Let's just all lie all the time, why not? See Aaron Rodgers. OK that name may not mean much to you over there but he's trending on twitter if you're interested. 😝

When any big game dev makes a bad game he get's blasted, why shouldn't the guy who decided "let's announce this game will release on this date" be blasted as well? Where's the personal responsibility? Kamiya apologized, I'll accept that, it seemed sincere.

god that photo with Wolverine looks terrible.. makes me laugh every time I see it. It's like he's trying his hardest to smile for a photo and it ends up wrong hahahah .. o man.

@rjejr It's not lying, it's just that development isn't going exactly as they planned so they have to make some changes. You're acting like they committed some sort of scam or crime. I get it if a game is getting delayed for like five years (not for indie developers) or if a game is delayed a bunch and the end result is disappointing, but come on, don't have cancel culture spread to something as small as a release date.

@rumple1980

@rjejr Its not really lying when they meant what they said when they gave the original release date, clearly between then and now is something has happened what has meant they have to push it back, would you rather get a broken or incomplete game instead?

@rjejr Dear God. Spoken like a person who has no idea how difficult and complex making a video game is and who clearly doesn't understand the concept of "lying". I bet you're perfect at your job and wouldn't mind such criticism about your performance.

@rumple1980 indeed. The rest look good, though.

@Originut That is true, I never really considered that. Maybe that's why Cyberpunk got released as a buggy mess despite all the delays.

People like @rjejr are why we don't get more communication from companies.

Release dates are only ever a current best guess. Schedules slip on projects much smaller and less complex than a AAA video game, and the fact anything is made at all on the timescales we see is a miracle made possible only by the heroic expenditure of effort from large teams of people. If you've ever seen a burndown chart you'd see how unpredictable these things are.

Deadlines are a great motivating factor, if you don't set one you'll often see projects balloon to a size that has no hopes of ever being released, or motivation will slip and people move onto other projects (just look at Half Life 3). They're not magical either. Setting one doesn't magically prevent unforeseen issues whether it's with new hardware, software dependencies introducing new bugs, a poorly understood requirement that turns out to be much more work than anybody expected.

Every time we berate a team for missing their own self-imposed deadline we're telling them to share less with us. The only reason why studios still announce anything in advance is because otherwise there's not enough hype to sell, and that's a sad state of affairs that we the consumer have caused.

See also: I really want to know where they're at with XCom 3. Given XCom: Enemy Unknown released in 2012, and XCom 2 released in 2016 (and ended with a teaser for its sequel), it would be really great to know how far into development it is. Obviously they can't say they think it'll be out in QX 202Y because people will jump on it as being a date set in stone, from which any divergence must be met with firey retribution

@theheadofabroom And every time we tell people it's OK to lie to us, rather than hold them accountable for their words, they lie to us more.

If I'm to blame for companies not making up phony release dates to tell us I'm more than happy to take responsibility for that, in fact I relish the opportunity to have companies tell us the truth.

And no, that doesn't mean less communication, it doesn't mean that at all, it means more honest communication. When you give someone a hard date you should only do that when you know you are going to make that date. Or it makes crucnh time. No harm in saying - we need more time, a couple of years at least, a few years at most. People call that a "window". I'm OK w/ Nintendo saying "spring" and a game releases in July, spring is a window and July is on the cusp. I'm not OK with a company saying September 13th and then it gets delayed 6 months until March.

@rjejr The fact that you're barely acknowledging what we're saying and instead basically saying that your opinion is superior without considering others' points and views is disappointing.

@rjejr You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.

To lie indicates an intent to deceive. These are cases of someone giving us the target they're working towards, which they think is feasible. Are their targets sometimes hopelessly optimistic? Sure. Are they outright lies? Vanishingly rarely.

I have worked in this industry, I know the intense pressure to deliver something you can be proud of within tight deadlines, and how sometimes you can walk out of a planning meeting having committed to delivering a feature within a fixed timeframe, only then to realise there's a load of work you hadn't considered. You then have to either reduce the scope of the work, negotiate an extension to your deadline, or crunch until you've got it done anyway. The latter is almost always a bad idea, because it affects your ability to crunch again later when it turns out to be necessary. This happens all over a large project and often that means that deadlines are pushed back, and the only time you can be certain of when something will be finished, is when it's out of the door and with the customers.

So yes, the expectations you wish to set, result in less communication.

@theheadofabroom You are using 1 definition of lie, there are others. Like #3 here.

"an inaccurate or untrue statement; falsehood:"

https://www.dictionary.com/browse/lie

It's not MY meaning, it's the dictionary's meaning. You want to argue with the dictionary, knock yourself out.

Also, are you really 100% sure no game developer has ever knowingly lied about a release date in order to keep investors buying stock in the company? Think about it, how many big AAA games get release dates in time for the holidays, so investors think they will have a good quarter, only to get delayed later? I think it happens way too often, almost every game it seems, for at least not someone high up in HQ thinking " You know, we're never going to make this date, but let's tell them November anyway, sounds better than saying 'when it's done'."

So yeah, maybe a lot of it is simply "wishful thinking", but if it's just wishful thinking, and they don't know for sure it's releasing that day, isn't that basically the same thing as knowing it's going to be late? How sure about a date do you have to be before it's a lie? 99% or 51%? If you're only 49% hopeful then surely it should qualify as a lie, no?

How often does a dev say "We're 50-50 we're going to hit that date."? Instead you get guys like Reggie saying "NOT next year, NOT next spring, this December 3rd." Then the game gets delayed not once, but twice. 😝

But if what you are saying happens that often then why don't people just stop giving dates? Why do you think it's better to give dates you can't make then communicate by saying "we're still working on it, it's coming along, could be this year, could be next year, when it goes gold we'll let you know." To me that would be more communication, once you give a date you allow yourself no wiggle room, but if you are constantly updating folks with progress being made - 30% done, 50% done - then you have stuff to talk about. Unless you're Pikmin 4 and "nearly complete" means "see you in 5 or 7 years, or maybe never".

I just don't see how if you don't give a date you have nothing to talk about. You won't to say it's not a lie, it's a broken promise, fine, I can live w/ that, but why can't they talk w/o a date? 🤷‍♂️

@HotGoomba Sorry to disappoint you. See, I'm reading. 😁

@naruball When it happens over and over and over again with so many videogames, not just large multinational corporations but also small 1 person companies, you would think at some point some kid in the street would speak up and say "Hey look, the Emperor isn't wearing any clothes." And then everybody would hate the kid b/c the Emperor would get mad and behead the kid and burn his headless body at the stake. B/c sometimes that's what happens when people speak the truth that nobody wants to hear.

It's NOT about how hard it is to make games. It's NOT even about how hard it is to predict about when a game is going to be completed. It's about people giving release dates which they know probably aren't going to be met b/c hardly any game is out by it's first release date. Look at Nintendo with the Zelda series, those games are almost always delayed, yet they keep giving release dates. Why? We all know they aren't coming out then, so why bother?

The title of this article on the Zelda games is framing it wrong. The question should NOT be - "Why are games delayed?" The question SHOULD be, "Why announce a date for a game nobody expects you to meet?"

https://kotaku.com/the-makers-of-zelda-on-why-their-games-are-usually-late-1782514185

The emperor has no clothes. Done.

@WallyWest See many replies above.

When it happens over and over again, not just to 1 series like Zelda or 1 company but to nearly every game that gets released the past few years, don't you think more of them know than not know they aren't hitting the date? If it happened once every few eyars that a game gets delayed, sure, there's probably a good reason. But when it happens to so many games, well do you really think that they think that they are going to be the 1 lucky company who actually releases it's game on time? They know. They all know. How could they not unless they've been living under a rock? And if they have been living under a rock maybe they shouldn't be in charge of picking release dates? 🤷‍♂️

At least Nintendo acknowledged "making games in HD is hard" as a bucket excuse for all of the Wii U game delays.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/insertcoin/2013/07/08/miyamoto-admits-nintendo-underestimated-the-switch-to-hd/?sh=442e78bd5294

@rjejr You do realize investors demand release dates right? Its not a case of just saying no you can't have it as its a ton of money involved. Honestly why are you so bothered by it? I would rather a game gets delayed a 100 times if it meant the final game is not broken and is a complete game. CDPR should have delayed Cyberpunk till 2023 quite frankly because nearly a year later and its still a mess with a barren world.

@WallyWest I mentioned investors as a reason release dates are given in a comment above. I didn't feel like repeating myself 4 times so each reply is a little different.

Since I'm nice, copy and paste:

"Also, are you really 100% sure no game developer has ever knowingly lied about a release date in order to keep investors buying stock in the company? Think about it, how many big AAA games get release dates in time for the holidays, so investors think they will have a good quarter, only to get delayed later? I think it happens way too often, almost every game it seems, for at least not someone high up in HQ thinking " You know, we're never going to make this date, but let's tell them November anyway, sounds better than saying 'when it's done'.""

It bothers me b/c it's insanity, constantly giving release dates that so many of are never going to be met. I'd really rather they just keep us updated on the progress and give us general yearly time frames than keep missing release dates.

Albert Einstein: The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.

@rjejr people want dates. Studios want to give people what they want, and as @WallyWest points out, studios already have to give their investors a current estimate on when they'll release, so they give that date.

If they were giving those dates knowing they couldn't hit them, investors would have a case to sue. It would be fraud. No business wants to take that risk.

The facts of the matter are that this stuff is incredibly unpredictable, and market pressures push studios to aim for release periods based on market demand, what else is releasing, trying to hit targets, etc so they're not going to just play it safe and let things drag on if they can help it. There's also a classic sample bias here in that you only remember the games that missed their release date. It would be interesting to look back at every game that released in the past console generation, or the past decade, or whatever long-term time window you like, and compare actual release date to what was first announced. If I was a gambling man I'd bet that more games made their window than you'd expect, and that it hasn't got particularly worse other than perhaps a spike during the past year or so for COVID-related delays.

If you want to think it's some grand conspiracy, you do you. The rest of us will keep considering release dates to be a best guess, and keep our fingers crossed that the games we're looking forward to come out in a good condition, as close to the anticipated date as possible.