A lot of big name titles are getting delayed these days. Both Watch_Dogs and Driveclub , two much anticipated next-generation launch titles, are now coming out next year. Battlefield 4 , the much awaited first-person shooter by EA and DICE, almost joined them. According to executive producer Patrick Bach in an interview with Games Industry , the team considered delaying the Xbox One and PS4 versions of Battlefield 4 , but they remained committed to being a launch title. He went on to talk about how people underestimate how hard it is to have a game available for launch saying:
“Well we’ve been very aggressive with Battlefield 4 in that we want to be out at launch with the next gen consoles. I think people might not grasp how hard that is, to develop a game at the same time as the hardware. We’ve been struggling quite a lot to keep up with the changes we’ve seen – both sides need to adapt and you end up being late. Everything is very complicated. Battlefield itself is a really complicated game, so it doesn’t make our lives any easier.
So we knew we’d set ourselves a tough challenge, but people on the outside seem to think that because there are going to be launch titles, it’s easy. What are we spending all our time doing? They don’t understand how hard it is!”
Bach went on to say he doesn’t blame the Watch_Dogs team for delaying their game and that meeting the launch date for next-gen consoles was a huge struggle. Maybe our expectations are a little bit overblown, but that won’t stop negative publicity from making Ubisoft’s stock plummet.
Source: Games Industry