Rocksteady Explains Batman Arkham Knight’s Delay

Warner Bros. showed wisdom last year when it delayed Batman Arkham Knight for eight months past its scheduled release. Quite a few blockbusters recently turned out to be broken or worse at release, and it would been a pity for Rocksteady to abandon the franchise with a misstep after the glorious achievements that were Batman Arkham Asylum & Batman Arkham City.

In the latest EDGE issue, and now available on GamesRadar, Game Director Sefton Hill clarified that it was not a quality issue, but they might have had to reduce the very scope of the game without the delay:

The vision for the game just meant we weren’t going to get it finished to the standard we wanted in time. It’s as simple as that. We had to decide: is it a case of reducing the scope to try to get something out? Or do we delay the release in order to make sure we can achieve the vision? That’s the discussion we had with [Warner’s] senior management. Fortunately, after a lot of grovelling, we got the time, because those guys believed in the vision too.

The question was never whether it was good enough. It was whether we were going to get it done. I don’t want to sound arrogant, but we were very confident in that direction. We just didn’t have time to finish what we wanted to do. It’s fair to say that’s my fault: the reason we didn’t ship in 2014 is because of the game I wanted to make. It couldn’t be done in the time we had.

Fortunately the scope is now intact, and players will be able to get the ultimate version of the Caped Crusader in Batman Arkham Knight, now pinned for a June 2 release on PC, PlayStation 4 and Xbox One platforms. For now, you can check out the latest trailer titled “Gotham is Mine”: