Naughty Dog, Ubisoft announce game delays

Naughty Dog has announced that The Last of Us Part II is to be delayed until late May 2020, while Ubisoft has delayed an impressive four titles of its own.

Game development is never smooth, and delays to planned launches not exactly rare. This week, however, has seen an impressive five eagerly-anticipated titles shuffled back from their scheduled launches - four of which come from publisher Ubisoft.

The sole non-Ubisoft game in the mix: The Last of Us Part II, Naughty Dog's follow-up to the critically acclaimed The Last of Us. 'It was during the last few weeks, as we were closing out sections of the game, that we realised we simply didn’t have enough time to bring the entire game up to a level of polish we would call Naughty Dog quality,' game director Neil Druckmann explains in an announcement confirming the title has been pushed to May 29th 2020. 'At this point we were faced with two options: compromise parts of the game or get more time. We went with the latter, and this new release date allows us to finish everything to our level of satisfaction while also reducing stress on the team.'

Ubisoft, meanwhile, has a longer list of titles to delay. The company has confirmed that Watch Dogs: Legion, Gods & Monsters, and Rainbow Six Quarantine have all had their early-2020 launch dates pushed back to late 2020 - while naval warfare title Skull & Bones won't be coming out until some time in the company's 2021-2022 financial year. The delays were directly linked by Ubisoft chief executive Yves Guillemot to poor sales from Ghost Recon Breakpoint and The Division 2, indicating that Ubisoft needs to do something more than just release the same games again but with prettier graphics.