During Electronic Arts announced yesterday that a “key game” has been delayed from fiscal year 13 to fiscal year 14. For those that don’t understand business jargon, that means that a “key game” has been delayed from coming out by March 31, 2013 to sometime after.
Michael Pachter seems to think the most likely candidate for the delay is Dragon Age III. Pachter is a financial analyst who is sometimes right, sometimes a master of math and research, and sometimes simply making an educated guess.
His stated that the development team that would have been working on Dragon Age III had been pulled off the project in order to work on Star Wars: The Old Republic.
He explained his theory this morning to those with a financial mind:
“When we spoke with the [EA] CEO, he added the color that the game was expected to slip because the team had been pulled away to work on another important project. While we don’t know what the game is, the only game that makes sense is Dragon Age 3, as it is developed by BioWare, the same studio that produced the Star Wars MMO. It seems obvious to us that the BioWare team responsible for Dragon Age 3 was asked to place development of that game on hold and work on Star Wars, to ensure that the latter game launched before the holidays.”
Pachter states that a team has been pulled off of a mystery game to work on another game. Another solution may be that the team that was working on Dead Space 3 has been pulled to work on the next Medal of Honor. Let’s say that Dragon Age III is indeed the delayed game. Perhaps the dev team was pulled to work on Mass Effect 3. Whatever the case may be, BioWare is keeping a lid on which game has been delayed.
BioWare has been hiring for Dragon Age III as far back as last May and has been pretty open about the future of the series, discussing it with fans at April’s PAX East expo.
Since a chief complaint about Dragon Age III was the feeling that the game was rushed and full of recycled content, perhaps delaying the third game in the series will add the needed polish the game needs to win back fans.
(Via Kotaku)