While Respawn Entertainment’s upcoming mecha-shooter Titanfall has already been tagged as one of the biggest releases of the coming year, there has been panic that the game is being rushed out to meet its March release date. However, EA is confirmed that is not the case and the company is taking care to develop the title as it is intended.
In a recent Q&A session with Eurogamer, analyst Stephen Ju from Credit Suisse expressed his concern about how the development of Titanfall was being rushed, while also raising questions as to what EA is or will be doing to ensure that the game’s remains intact while meeting the March release date.
To this, EA Games Label Boss, Patrick Soderlund, responded by stating: “So on the quality side, and if we're rushing a game, I would say no, we're not doing that at all.”
"This is a very experienced, seasoned team, one of the best in the industry. They've got a bunch of great games under their belt. We have been monitoring and working with them for a long time. This has been a game that's been in development for multiple years. And all the data that we have in front of us suggest that this game will not only be highly rated, but very highly rated.”
“So I feel better than I would normally feel at this time, on a game like this."
Titanfall’s importance increased when Microsoft secured Xbox One, Xbox 360 and PC exclusivity for the game earlier and, according to Eurogamer, “internally Microsoft was delighted to learn of Titanfall's March 2014 release date - having previously thought it might have been delayed to the summer.”
However, in a recent investor call, EA's chief financial officer Blake Jorgensen expanded on the release date of Titanfall, saying Ubisoft's decision to delay its own open world title Watch Dogs to its 2015 financial year provided Titanfall with an opportunity to launch in the fourth quarter of EA's 2014 financial year (Jan-March 2014).
"[Respawn have] done a fantastic job keeping that on schedule and possibly even ahead of schedule in some ways. We saw an opportunity and a launch window in the fourth quarter because of some of the critical titles that were planned to be there moving out of the quarter, like Watchdogs or The Crew or some other titles, it looked like they're being delayed,” Jorgensen said.
“Titanfall is a title that also has an amazing following already in the market. Ever since it was shown at E3, people have been highly interested in it. Microsoft wanted to include it in its marketing campaign associated with Xbox, which you're seeing in the market today. And all of that led us to decide to move it into the year."
Titanfall is set to hit Xbox One, Xbox 360, and PC on March 11, 2014 in North America and March 13, 2014 in Europe and Australia. There's also talk of the game coming to PlayStation 4, though nothing has been confirmed.
