Sony has provided an update about the impact of the spreading of COVID-19 on a worldwide basis, which could damage plans for the release of games scheduled for 2020.
Triple-A retail releases from the publisher and platform owner include The Last of Us Part II, coming May 29, and Ghost of Tsushima, releasing on Jun. 26. Kotaku’s Jason Schreier had hinted such delays, and a move in that sense would not be much of a surprise now.
The owner of PlayStation “estimates that there will be no material impact on this business for the current fiscal year.”
Sony details that “no issues have emerged so far,” but also that it is “carefully monitoring the risk of delays in production schedules for game software titles at both its first-party studios and partner studios.”
This might affect “primarily” developers of the SIE Worldwide Studios family “in Europe and the U.S.,” the area where the novel coronavirus is doing more damage at the time being.
The big releases have not been harmed thus far for games, even though Bethesda has recently delayed the Wastelanders update for Fallout 76 by a week due to its employees shifting to smart working.
With The Last of Us Part II and Ghost of Tsushima coming in just several months, there’s a chance that such a change could cause at least a few weeks of delays further in 2020.
Capcom also had to make it clear that customers might not get their Resident Evil 3 copies in time for April 3 launch due to issues with the shipment of physical units, even though the development of the game was completed weeks ago.
Published: Mar 27, 2020 04:12 am