We don’t want to sour your Christmas spirit with bad news, but you may not be too happy by the latest Marvel’s Blade leak, which claims Blade won’t see the light of day for several years, possibly taking long enough to launch on next-gen consoles.
The source of the leak is industry insider Jeff Grubb, who dropped the bomb on episode 191 of the XboxEra podcast. The Christmas episode brought along very exciting news for fans of the original God of War trilogy, and the complete opposite vibes for Blade fans. Grubb claimed developer Arkane Lyon has set an internal target of 2027 for the launch of Marvel’s Blade.
This is already rather discouraging, but it gets worse. Grubb added that 2027 is essentially the best-case scenario and it’s not out of the realm of possibilities for the game to come out even later.
Marvel’s Blade was revealed in a cinematic trailer during The Game Awards at the beginning of December. Observant fans would have noticed that the trailer mentioned nothing of either a release date or gaming platforms on which the game will launch. The only official statement is Marvel’s Blade is “now in development” at Arkane Lyon, in collaboration with Marvel Games and under the wing of Bethesda.
Jeff Grubb’s leak gives us more potential context behind the minimal information provided at The Game Awards. The 2027 release target for Marvel’s Blade, if officially revealed, would have most likely caused gamers to wonder why they’re watching a trailer for a game nearly half a decade away. As for the lack of platforms attached to Marvel’s Blade, it’s practically guaranteed that next-gen consoles will be out on the market or very close to it in 2027, which opens up the opportunity for a multi-generational launch.
We sincerely doubt Arkane and Bethesda would opt to skip the current generation even if Marvel’s Blade is delayed beyond 2027, so we wouldn’t worry too much about it. With the majority of the game’s development time taking place within the current generation’s cycle and the sheer monetary incentive of a cross-generation launch, things should go truly catastrophic for Marvel’s Blade to not launch on the current generation of consoles.
If this information turns out true, Marvel’s Blade would be by far Arkane Lyon’s longest development cycle. The studio’s most recent game, Deathloop, came out in 2021, which means a minimum of six years between releases. Prolonged development should be a benefit to Marvel’s Blade’s quality, though sister studio Arkane Austin also took six years between Prey and Redfall, and we all know how the latter turned out.
