Amazon Games has delayed New World, its upcoming MMO, from August 31st to September 28th, the studio announced on Wednesday. The delay — the game’s fourth — comes shortly after the end of a closed beta, which wrapped up on August 3rd at 2:59AM ET.
The team will be “making some improvements” based on what players found in the beta, taking time to “smash bugs, improve stability, and polish the game,” according to a post on Twitter.
“This was not an easy decision to make,” the team said. “We know this isn’t the first time we’ve changed our launch date in pursuit of quality, and that it can be disappointing to wait a bit longer. But we want to be sure we deliver you the highest quality game possible at launch.”
Looks like Adventurers played more hours than we thought! During the Beta we actually had more than 25 million hours played.
Thanks again for participating in the Closed Beta.
— New World (@playnewworld) August 4, 2021
New World was first set to release in May 2020, then was delayed to August 25th, 2020, then to spring 2021, then to August 31st, and now the new September 28th date. And the game hasn’t been the only Amazon Games title with a bumpy history. Hero shooter Crucible went from launch to closed beta to eventually being canceled across the span of a few months in 2020. Breakaway, a competitive fantasy brawler, was announced in 2016 but was canceled in 2018. Pac-Man Live Studio, a version of Pac-Man designed to be played right on Twitch and developed in partnership with Bandai Namco, was announced in May 2020 for a June 2020 release, but the game still isn’t out yet and isn’t listed on Amazon Games’ website.
Bandai Namco told me in May that Pac-Man Live Studio “is not quite ready to launch yet” and that it was working to determine a release date. I happened to ask this week if there was any update, but the company said it still does not have any news to share.
Update August 4th, 6:21PM ET: Added tweet from Amazon revising the number of hours played during the beta.
