Deep Silver’s upcoming Metro Exodus is looking like a fine first-person shooter. The third entry into the well-received FPS horror series is set to release next February following a delay. While it is avoiding the likes of Red Dead Redemption 2, Call of Duty Black Ops 4 and Assassin’s Creed Odyssey, which are some seriously heavy hitters, its chosen release date is, as it turns out, just as busy.
Indeed, the Metro Exodus release date is February 22, 2019. This is the same day as Days Gone, Crackdown 3, and Anthem. Hoo boy. Just how does a game like Metro Exodus stand out on such a busy release date? This is something that Jon Bloch, executive producer of 4AGames, spoke to Eurogamer about.
“Three other companies had the same idea!” Bloch cries. The competition is surprisingly fierce next February. More than you might usually expect. More and more titles are released during a year’s first quarter these days. This is in order to avoid the deluge of content that releases in the fall of the previous year. Bloch goes into some detail regarding the release calendar that game developers around the world face each year.
“If we were coming out right before Christmas we’d be having the same conversation, right? It seems like there are a lot of games coming out in the next year or so. We have to pick the date that makes the most sense for us and the most sense for the game. There’s going to be competition no matter when we come out, right? We’re not going to get our own perfect window of nobody else releasing a game, unless it’s maybe like 1st January! A lot of people tend to avoid the holidays unless they’re already just a part of that process. Other companies try to get stuff out before their fiscal ends, so March tends to get busy.”
Metro Exodus Release Date: Will it Harm the Game?
We are seeing more and more triple-A games launching within the first quarter (final financial quarter) of a year these days, but in Metro Exodus’ case, it sounds like the delay is necessary, and it should stand out fine, anyway. Bloch argues that the delay was needed to apply a lot more polish to the game. “Some of the previous games were a little rough around the edges at times, it brought some charm to the games, but we want to do better this time. More than just doing more stuff for our fans or more scope, we want to push the level of quality.”
A good amount of polish sounds good to us. Making sure that Metro Exodus is as good as it can be is one of the best things 4AGames can do in order to make it stand out. Other than that, however, it should do fine. It’s a single-player FPS horror, rather than an action adventure multiplayer (Anthem and Crackdown 3), and not an open-world zombie game like Days Gone. Here’s hoping that all four games perform well!
