Amazon Game Studios has delayed the New World launch yet again. According to the latest dev update, the team is still working on the end-game features that they promised when they pushed back the game’s launch last year.
“We’ve been hard at work on compelling end-game features we believe are important to include at launch,” said the studio. “These features won’t be ready for the Spring timeframe that we had communicated.”
The upcoming 17th century open world MMORPG was initially scheduled to launch in May 2020 but was pushed back to August 2020 due to the challenges posed by the COVID-19 quarantines. In July 2020, the studio again announced that they were delaying the game’s launch to spring 2021 to add more features and “make the experience even better.” Now, the developers are eyeing an August 31 launch date with a closed beta scheduled for July 20.
“With this extra time we’ll be able to add these substantial improvements while polishing and fine tuning the whole game before we open Aeternum’s shores to the world,” Amazon said.
The announcement follows a Bloomberg report about mismanagement, trend-chasing, and just general chaos within Amazon Game Studios that has resulted in the cancellation of multiple games including the League of Legends-inspired game Nova, Fortnite-like Intensity, Breakaway, and Crucible, which was cancelled shortly after it was pulled back into beta. All of which are being blamed on Studio Head Mike Frazzini’s inexperience.
According to the report, Frazzini had never developed or helped develop a video game before he helped start the studio. With numerous cancelled projects and nothing to show after eight years, the pressure is on Frazzini to actually finish and release a successful game.