Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night, Koji Igarashi’s spiritual successor to the Castlevania Symphony of the Night, has been delayed to an unknown point in 2019. The PlayStation Vita version of the game was also announced to have been canceled. It was originally set to be released sometime in 2018.
The delay and canceled Vita port were announced on an update posted on the game’s Kickstarter page. In the post and in its accompanying video, Koji Igarashi discussed moving the game out of 2018. He noted the reason behind pushing the game’s release back “is to raise the quality level [of the game], especially after all the very valuable feedback from the Beta Backer Demo.”
As for the cancellation of the Vita port of the game, Igarashi noted that the main reason for it is “due to Sony’s plans to discontinue the Vita console, ending production of physical copies and stopping certain online store support features.” Sony reportedly told developers in May that they would stop maing physical Vita carts by the end of the fiscal 2018 year (which is March 31, 2019). For backers of the project that wanted the game on the Vita, they will have two options.
The first is to simply change which platform that they would like to receive the game on. The other is to get a refund for their copy of the game. The update on the Kickstarter goes on to discuss how Vita backers can change their preferred platform via the survey pages. The post also adds that Vita backers who donated at the “unlimited tier” can get a refund for “affected games,” but must request it before September 20, 2018.
Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night was fully funded via Kickstarter within an hour of it going live in May 2015. The game was envisioned by Igarashi after he had left Konami in 2014 due to creative differences over the Castlevania franchise.
