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Ubisoft has confirmed that The Division will not be released this year as previously planned.
Instead, the game is now scheduled to be released some time between January and March of 2016.
"It is never an easy decision to move launch dates, but we are committed to make decisions that will benefit the players," CEO Yves Guillemot told investors, as reported by Polygon.
"We want to make sure we have enough feedback from consumers from alpha and betas to polish it as much as possible before the launch so it comes to the market with the best experience possible. We expect less sales in the financial year than if it would have been launched in the Christmas season, but over the whole, we expect as much sales over its lifespan."
The decision as no doubt informed upon by the rough time experienced by the company in the wake of last year’s Assassin’s Creed: Unity release.
The company did confirm, however, that it does have a triple-A console game lined up for release this Q4 – although it hasn’t yet named the title.
In the same investor call Kotaku reports that the company also confirmed that, aside from the Just Dance franchise, it will from this point only be releasing games on PS4 and Xbox One. Last year Ubisoft released a separate Assassin’s Creed game, named Rogue, for PS3 and Xbox 360. There will be no such release this year, nor will The Division be released for older machines.
In March 2014 Ubisoft VP Lionel Raynaud told Edge that the company will have games for PS3 and 360 for this year and probably the years after”. However, things had seemingly changed by August when Guillemot stated that after 2015, it will be hard for us to create games for PS3 and 360”.
