Microsoft does not plan to delay Crackdown 3 again. The destructive shooter, which was originally scheduled for release in 2016, has been delayed three times. The third delay, which was announced in August last year, was the final straw for Microsoft, who reportedly is no longer willing to postpone the game’s release.
That doesn’t mean it’s circling the drain, however. Xbox boss Phil Spencer says the game isn’t cancelled, and that the team working on it “have a plan” to make sure the game appeals to both long-term Crackdown fans and new players.
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In an interview with Eurogamer, Spencer also takes some of the blame for the latest delay, saying that he “felt like the game needed more time to reach what I think of as Crackdown, which I think should be a strong Xbox franchise.” Eurogamer’s Wesley Yin-Poole, however, reports that that delay, which pushed the game to its current release date (set for February 2019), is “the final time” Microsoft is willing to delay the game’s release.
That can only mean two things. The first is that, if it makes no further progress, Crackdown 3 will be cancelled. The second possible outcome is that the game will release in February, no matter the state it’s in. Given the amount of time Microsoft has invested in the title – Crackdown 3 is now due to come out more than two years after its original release date – that second option seems more likely. Microsoft will, after all, want to recoup some of the costs of the game’s lengthy development.
If you’ve not been keeping track of the saga that is that development process, Crackdown was set to release in 2016. It was first pushed back to November 2017, before then being delayed another half a year, to this spring.
When it didn’t show up earlier this year, Microsoft then confessed that it had announced Crackdown 3 “too early,” and then pushed its release back again, settling on that February 2019 release date. Assuming Spencer’s comments about not cancelling the game are true, you’ll finally be able to play Crackdown 3 in the spring, for better or worse.