The Saints Row reboot will not hit the originally planned release date.
That's the news from developer Volition, who announced in a blog post that a six-month delay would delay the game from February 25, 2022, to November 23.
Having "underestimated" the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic, the studio will be taking the extra time to "give our team more time to hone their craft," according to Volition's creative director Jim Boone.
"We're fine-tuning and there won't be a lot of changes to the game other than quality and overall polish," Boone said.
As we mentioned when we announced Saints Row in August, this will be the greatest and best Saints Row game of all time, and to achieve our goal, we have agreed to a generous but essential amount of time to achieve our ambitions.
Rest assured that there will be no changes to the story or the characters or anything that we have lovingly imagined in recent years and that we already share with you.
"In the last two years, all parts of the entertainment industry have been affected/impacted in one way or another. As gamers, we know what it is. To have something delayed that you've been waiting for; it's frustrating and disappointing. But we also know that when we finally get our hands on Saints Row, it will have been worth the wait. It's our absolute priority to get it right."
Analysis: no alarms or surprises
Revealed in August 2021, it never really felt like the new Saints Row game would hit its original release date. From reveal to launch in just five months, it doesn't fly these days (although there is some evidence that the game has been in development for at least 2019).
It's hard to even remember a game slated for a release date before the pandemic even started, let alone during it, even if a development team did well to adapt to changes in work at home.
As such, release dates now do little more than serve the purpose of investors and shareholders gauging the interest a game could receive on its eventual release, and perhaps racking up some pre-orders in the process.
Still, it probably works for the best for Saints Row regardless – it gives the open-world criminal game a little more time to polish up and avoids what was shaping up to be a busy February release window that would have seen it mezclarse. with Elden Ring, Dying Light 2 and Horizon Forbidden West.