Electronic Arts (EA), the publisher of the game "Anthem," announced that the game will be officially launched in early 2019 instead of the initial plan of fall 2018.
A tweet from Wall Street Journal video game reporter, Sarah E. Needleman, on Jan. 30 confirmed the news. According to her tweet, EA changed the official release date of the multi-player action game developed by BioWare to give way to a new "Battlefield" game that it will launch in October. EA emphasized that the change in date is because they believe "Anthem" will be more successful if launched later.
The call from EA to Needleman came after video game site Kotaku published an article on Jan. 24 saying "Anthem" will launch much later than the initial plan because of the delay in the development of the game. According to Kotaku, the BioWare developers who talked to them anonymously said that the initial release date of fall of 2018 was never feasible. Apparently, Bioware is struggling to deliver "Anthem," utilizing all possible manpower, time and resources to finish the game.
Furthermore, Bioware is also attempting to build a better version of Activision's game "Destiny," a first-person multiplayer action game, to make up for the criticized release of BioWare's "Mass Effect: Andromeda." Kotaku also said that Bioware developers are having a hard time reconfiguring and adapting EA DICE's "Frostbite's" game engine to the open-world environment, action role-playing game that BioWare is envisioning "Anthem" to be. Reconfiguring game engines to accommodate something which it was not built for, after all, takes a lot of years. In addition, developers are also having a hard time identifying the direction that should be taken to develop the game the way they want it to be.
"Anthem" will be released in early 2019 for PC, PS4 and Xbox One.
