It was only a matter of time before the other shoe dropped. After delays hit The Witcher 3, Dying Light, Batman: Arkham Knight, and The Order: 1886, the video game industry has decided to simply shut down for the remainder of 2014 and start up again next year. The decision was supposed to come during the press conferences for Microsoft, EA, Ubisoft, and Sony, but was leaked early because everything is leaked early these days.
This coalition of video game publishers has come together in unprecedented fashion for this decision, though no one seemed to tell Nintendo. CEO of Nintendo, Satoru Iwata, was recently quoted saying, “While all other publishers might be taking the year off, I can assure you Nintendo will still…” This reporter stopped listening because no one cares.
“This was a hard decision to make”, said Adam Boyes, Vice President of Publisher and Developer Relations at SCEA, “But at this point, no one really cares. There’s like six games coming out this fall and they were all bound to get delayed as well.”
The games Boyes is referencing are Destiny, Alien: Isolation, Dragon Age: Inquisition, The Evil Within, Evolve, and Far Cry 4. All games have been delayed until 2015. Except for Alien: Isolation, it was cancelled because Alien fans have not suffered enough. Aliens: Colonial Marines Ultimate Edition will be released in its stead.
“We’re used to delays by now,” said Yves Guillemont, CEO of Ubisoft, “We delayed Watch Dogs, we delayed The Division. Look, as an industry we might have gotten ahead of ourselves. We were all hopped up on next-gen, excited to do something new, and so we promised a years-worth of games we couldn’t deliver. So we decided to cut our losses and just wait until 2015.”
This trend has spilled over to indie games as well. Volume’s Mike Bithell recently announced his game won’t likely see release until 2015. The status of Jonathan Blow’s The Witness is unknown, but we recently sent an undercover reporter to gather information (their whereabouts are currently unknown). One can only assume all indie games like Hotline Miami 2, Hyper Light Drifter, and Aztez will be delayed until 2015 as well.
“No one likes the fact we have to shut down video games for a year,” Boyes confided. “It simply seems like the best thing to do, rather than have people put all their hopes on games like Dragon Age 3.” Boyes leaned in and whispered, “Which probably can’t live up to the hype.”
Sony CEO Kaz Hirai had a little solace to assuage pain of the massive industry delay. “Don’t worry, we will still be re-releasing all of the games from 2013 to make up for the lack of 2014 games. Not only can Sony fans look forward to The Last of Us Remastered and Metro Redux, but we’ll also be re-releasing Grand Theft Auto V on the PS4, and even bad games like Dead Space 3: Even Less Scary and Fuse: Still Boring. In fact, we’re currently in talks to bring back our entire release catalogue from post-E3 2013 so gamers can really get that feeling of deja vue. Heck, we might re-release Infamous: Second Son to see if anyone notices.”
When asked if we might get a chance to see PlayStation All-Stars Battle Royale on the PS4, Hirai told us to, “…never mention those words again.” We won’t be so easily silenced.
The most surprising move is from Electronic Arts who, after a successful release of Titanfall, were primed to have a big fall with The Sims 4, Battlefield: Hardline, and Dragon Age. When asked about his cooperation with the Great 2014 Delay, CEO Andrew Wilson said, “Honestly, we want to make Titanfall Game of the Year Edition. We agreed the best way for Titanfall to win Game of the Year is to just end the year right now. Quit while you’re ahead kinda thing.”
Wilson continued, “We’re gonna put out sports games like Madden 15 and all that other stuff, but it’s just gonna be the same game with a roster update. Just another year in sports games, am I right?” Wilson then elbowed his assistant in the ribs while winking at the press. “Nah, but seriously, everyone will just buy it anyways, so who cares?”
The communities based around games like Call of Duty and Battlefield seem relatively uncaring about suspension of their beloved franchises. When asked to comment, Battlefield 4 fan, Drew Weager, said, “Honestly? DICE just got Battlefield 4 working, so I’ve barely played the Battlefield game I bought last year.”
We interviewed a Mountain Dew can about the delay of Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare. It seemed indifferent.
“Some people might think we’re overreacting, shutting down the entire industry for a year,” said Head of Xbox, Phil Spencer. “If there is one thing I have noticed about video game fans, it’s that they like to wait. What is the game Sony’s trying to put out? The Lone Guardian? Last of the Guardian Mohicans? People have waited for that game for five years! Every time I come to E3 it’s people’s most anticipated game! Think if we delayed the video game industry for five years? We’d be the most anticipated thing in the whole world. If there’s one thing we proven over the years, it’s delays work and publishers know what their doing. Here, have a lollipop.”
It was root beer, so I took it.
It is sad to bid farewell to video games until 2015. With no new games to play fans might be confronted with the horrors of the outdoors instead of measuring the frame rate on the new Star Wars Battlefront trailer. Websites like Reddit and 4chan might become peaceful places where people gather to calmly discuss their opinions with an open mind. The consoles wars might call a cease-fire, maybe someone will release a third-party game on the WiiU. Half-Life 3 might actually get announced. Obama might finally have time to play the Witcher 2 before the anticipated sequel. The Great 2014 Delay might be a sad time for video games, and humanity has a tough road ahead in the coming months.
This article is (obviously) written in jest. Kaz Hirai won’t speak to me, everyone loves Nintendo, and Half-Life 3 is never getting announced. If you are offended, please let your indignation be heard in the comments below.
Is this bullshit or reall?
It’s satire. Read the end of the article.
you probably coulda figured it out in the first paragraph though. Or maybe by the title… 🙂
Seems legit to me.
AMAZING.
Hilarious!! Love me some good satire, friend, and you freaking nailed it (and the video game industry). Really well done.
Couldn’t agree more. Funniest thing I’ve read all year.
If you can’t laugh at this, get the hell out.
That was cute.
brilliant article.
Not funny.
lol this definitely fooled me. I thought this was real. I was joking about this very thing with my friend last week.
Thank you for the laugh, I almost woke up my daughter
I laughed so hard…that I didn’t laugh, because this article sucks. Satire better, Josh Hinke.
Maybe for PS, not for Xbox.
Like you, the article was just a joke.
We need games!
Awesome article premise and execution.
And in the process you mentioned a lot of games to look forward to in the second half of this year, too 🙂
Not really offended I just think the article was really shite…….
gaming journalism= “we really hate (insert rushed game here) for being put out clearly unfinished and/or broken!”….*games get delayed* “hey wtf gaming companies hurry up and rush out these games we want so we can then complain about them being rushed!”
I hope this was just satire, lol. This article is TERRIBLE!
Very bad joke…i really believed it. Save this shit for April Fool’s Day ok?
Funniest thing I’ve read in a while haha. Absolutely amazing xD
yeah….. not funny
It didn’t seem funny to me – just stupid. If the leaders in the video game industry came together and decided to delay development and/or production until 2015 the first group of people after gamers themselves that wouldn’t be amused is the governments with a free market system. This would most likely be an anti-trust violation. Yes, really funny. Hahhahahhahahaha.
Sadly it isn’t a joke, this is true we won’t see any new games before October 🙁
As someone who works in the industry, I was rolling on the floor laughing at this article. Much needed relief on the Friday before E3.
To me from a business sense they have to delay these games and here is why. Notice that most of these big budget games are being built for cross-gen play. I will use Titan Fall as an example here, nothing against the game or MS. When they invested in TF the expectations were for it to sell well on the X1, but they really needed it to explode on the X360, and to everyone’s surprise TF sold better on the X1 despite being dwarfed in install base to the 360.
Fast forward to Watch Dogs and again you will see that it sold better on the newer systems, which again is a huge surprise. Even more surprising is the 1/8 attachment on the PS4 in week one. We all know things tail off after week one.
Now on to some math. Destiny has a budget of $500M which in turn means that they must sell a minimum of 9M copies in order to break even. Recent statistics show that the next ten systems are selling more copies, so the expectation is that the bulk of the copies will in fact sell better on the newer systems. Here is the problem though the newer systems have a total user base today of roughly 13M combined. Looking back on the recent attachment rates of games per system it is likely that Destiny will not hit 9M copies sold in the first 30 days, and unfortunately that is the cutoff date ahed of the inevitable steep decline. I’m willing to bet that you won’t see most of these games come to fruition until we have a total install base of roughly 25M total.
We can lay the blame on the publishers because spending $500M on a game that cost the same $60 as a low budget game is just plain idiotic. (Replace Destiny with any recently named AAA title, and the story remains unchanged).
You obviously dont know anything about destiny then. The game looks great its a great idea and bungie is spreading the game and dlc over ten years so theres alot of room there to make a profit. Also even if more sales are on next gen im sure any money left to make will be picked up by current gen gamers.
They don’t have 10 years to make a profit. Are you kidding?
Yes I hope that it is a great game, but that’s not the point of what I was saying. I’m not talking about the quality of the games, I am speaking about the business side of things that lead to the delays.
Oh my god I love this. Especially when interviewing the Mountain Dew can about Call of Duty.
Hahaha very funny.. Not. But seriously, these developers and publisher should work together and release an exact release date. They should be professional about this and not delay over and over again. Look at what happend to watch dogs, even with the delays the game is still full of bugs and not optimized well for pc’s.
A video game article in the style of The Onion? More, please!