'Uncharted 4: A Thief's End' Delayed Till April & Why That's a Good Thing

Neil Druckmann and Bruce Starlet from Naughty Dog released a statement today in which they announced another delay for Uncharted 4: A Thief’s End.

Let’s start with the good news: Uncharted 4: A Thief’s End is wrapping up production and is shaping up to be the proper send off for Nathan Drake that we’ve promised you. The bad news is that we need a bit more time to finish the game so that it meets our standards and vision. Let’s cut to the chase, Uncharted 4: A Thief’s End has a new release date in North America of April 26, 2016.

Pegged originally with a March release, the game is now seeing a two month delay and while disappointing, this move is not only a good sign from Naughty Dog but a gutsy one as well. That and the full statement after the jump.

Neil and Bruce continued

This is our largest Uncharted game to date, and the team has been working incredibly hard to meet the challenge of closing out the game’s development in a timely manner. However, as we approached our final deadlines and started wrapping up the game’s levels, we realized that several key sequences needed extra resources to bring them to the finish line. After carefully considering all of our options, we decided to extend our schedule, making sure that we get a few more polish passes before submitting our gold master (the final disc for manufacturing).

Pushing the date is not an easy choice, and we wouldn’t do it if we didn’t feel in our hearts it’s the best course of action for the game. To you, our loyal fans, we hope you’ll accept our sincere apology. We know many of you have been waiting patiently for Nathan Drake’s final chapter, and now we humbly ask you to wait a bit longer.

On April 26, 2016 the most ambitious installment in the Uncharted series will be in your hands.

Delaying a game isn’t easy and something that’s not done often. In addition to disappointing fans who’ve been awaiting the game with high anticipation, there is also a business side as well. It’s not as if you can simply wake up and decide to delay a major AAA title like this without having tough conversations with Sony who is expecting to release the game and in turn has already calculated certain financial gains to be had from it.

Money aside, there is an entire army within Sony and Naughty Dog who’s been hard at work to ramp up to the games launch with marketing campaigns, partnerships, and more, all which have to be redone or renegotiated now. Again, not an easy thing to do but the right thing to do and here’s why it’s a good sign that Naughty Dog was able to do this.

Time and time again we see games arrive that could have used a few more months of polish. More often than not, those studios don’t have the clout and weight of Naughty Dog and they simply can’t delay a title, due to all the reasons I stated above and so instead, we get a game that requires a few patches before it’s smooth sailing. Unfortunately, those few months can not only be frustrating for fans, but often do enough damage to the title that it never fully recovers.

In this case, Naughty Dog respects its fan so much that they want to ensure that what they deliver is their vision fully realized. If a game is released and delivers on its promise, you can bet that whatever delay that led up to it is soon forgotten. However, release a subpar game that takes its time to find its footing (look no further than another AAA title from Sony, DriveClub which stumbled out of the gates but ultimately has turned into an excellent racer. Evolution Studios has yet to recover from it and instead of working on party 2, had to lay off a good portion of their staff) and you’ll always have a game that can’t quite escape the shadow of its initial launch.