Ubisoft has officially confirmed its preseason launch for XDefiant is being delayed after the developers looked over feedback from the FPS’ most recent Public Test Session.
Feedback was well-received by the devs, according to the team, but “surfaced some inconsistencies in the game experience” that must be addressed before it can launch in full. This led to an additional delay for the FPS title after it was previously pushed back from a “late summer” release target due to not passing a submission compliance process for Sony, Microsoft, and other first-party company’s standards.
For now, the XDefiant team is focused on “working to address these issues and testing them to make sure we deliver on our goal of being a best-in-class arcade shooter.”
For some players who participated in the recent XDefiant PTS this is great news because a large number of them were already pointing out the need for a delay; many feared the game had regressed since previous playtests. That included problems with the hit registration, movement feeling less smooth, and several other issues.
While the submission process and feedback are likely the biggest reasons for multiple delays, there is also a chance Ubisoft missed its mark of launching ahead of Modern Warfare 3 and now the ‘CoD-killer’ is looking to move out of that window entirely.
While XDefiant is going to be free-to-play and has a lot of hype behind it, directly competing with CoD with a holiday season launch would likely severely impact its success. If this delay pushes the game into December or even early 2024, it gets XDefiant out of that heavyweight spotlight and gives the dev team more time to polish the game—a win-win for Ubisoft and fans if the hype isn’t completely dried up by the time it eventually drops.
