Bethesda’s Vice President of Marketing and PR, Pete Hines, revealed on Twitter today that Wolfenstein: The New Order has been pushed back from its original fourth quarter 2013 release window and is now scheduled to launch sometime in 2014.
Speaking with Polygon after the announcement, Hines explained that the reasons behind the decision to delay Wolfenstein: The New Order are mostly related to having to developing multiple versions of the game for both current and next-gen consoles.
“Working on next-gen and current gen [versions of Wolfenstein: The New Order] definitely has an impact, you’re developing for two different things. The fact that the next-gen stuff is still moving is also definitely a factor. But the most important thing was definitely just looking where it was at, what they needed to polish. Because it’s just not trying to be a shooter, because it’s trying to be a shooter that also has driving elements, story elements, narrative, stealth sections — each one of those has to be excellent…”
“…We wanted to make something that brought in all these elements, and as it turns out, the polish time you spend on the shooting stuff has no impact on what it feels like in the stealth part.”
“MachineGames has been working on this game for a while. You don’t want to waste all that time and effort for the sake of a couple of months, if a couple of months could make all of the difference in the world.”
Today’s news is sure to come as a bit of a disappointment for fans of the Wolfenstein franchise. With that said, it is hard to justify getting too worked up over a short delay if the end result really does end up being a vastly improved game.
We will keep an eye out for any updates on the final release date for Wolfenstein: The New Order and let you know as soon as Bethesda has any additional news to share.
