It looks like Overkill’s The Walking Dead has hit even more issues. The Ps4 and Xbox One versions of the game will miss their November 6, 2018 launch in North America and November 8, 2018 release in Europe, due to issues with polish and a dispute with the console rights holder. This revelation comes from the Starbreeze quarterly financial report. A snippet of that report on page 5 contains the relevant info if you want to see it.
This is not the first time the game has hit delays. The game has been stuck in development limbo for many years now, first being announced in 2014 before being pushed back several times. It was originally supposed to land in 2016, but that obviously didn’t happen. It looked to be finally on track to release in a couple of months at the latest, but that’s no longer happening. Well, for the console versions at least.
The actual reasoning for the delay of just the console version is that the game’s console publisher 505 Games wants to maximize marketing impact by synergizing the release of both platforms. This means that PC gamers will get the game months ahead of everyone else, and that the game will miss the chance to hit the holiday season for the installed userbase on consoles. What impacts this will have on sales can’t be easily measured, but it may not turn out well. Another interesting side effect relates to how the PC version will compare without those extra few weeks of polish.
Here is the full statement from Starbreeze:
505 Games, which owns the publishing rights to the console version of Overkill’s The Walking Dead, has decided to release the console version of the game in February instead of November, as previously planned. They have opted to do this because they want to ensure a simultaneous release of the console version digitally and in stores to achieve optimal marketing impact and maximize sales. The important global release of the PC version is planned for 6 November. Notably, according to the current plan we will be recognizing the advance royalty of USD $10 million we have received from 505 Games for the console version in the fourth quarter of this year.
Overkill’s The Walking Dead takes players on a zombie-filled journey through the ruins of Washington D.C. as one of four heroic survivors. And despite these delays, we still don’t know that much about the gameplay elements. Some coverage has revealed that the game will feature a mission structure, but there’s been very little gameplay beyond that simple setup. Even from what gameplay we’ve seen, it looked pretty rough; animations, zombie-fighting gameplay and graphics all looked. . .meh.
All in all, this may be one of those gaming horror stories that never ends up being released, or coming out to major disappointment, we’ll just have to wait even longer to see what happens.
Overkill’s The Walking Dead is set to release on November 6, 2018 for PC, and will launch at some point in February 2019 for PlayStation 4 and Xbox One.
