But it’s not a delay, EA exec tells Wall Street Journal

While denying an earlier report that development is behind schedule, Electronic Arts told The Wall Street Journal that Anthem, the open-world, multiplayer action game coming from BioWare, will launch in 2019 and not 2018, the window originally given for the game at E3 2017.

Instead, EA will launch a new Battlefield game. Blake Jorgensen, Electronic Arts’ chief financial officer, told the Journal that the publisher figured Anthem would do better if it launched in a quieter period than the traditional end-of-the-year crush of big titles.

“People are trying to create a story,” Jorgensen told the Journal, denying reports Anthem was delayed.

Last week, Kotaku reported that Anthem would not launch until 2019, with unidentified sources at BioWare saying the fall 2018 window was never considered realistic. The news was couched inside a story portraying BioWare as feeling pressure to develop a big hit following the disappointing March 2017 launch of Mass Effect Andromeda, whose support was terminated relatively quickly in August.

Anthem, an open-world, science-fiction RPG whose characters wear mechanized combat suits and battle monsters in a post-apocalyptic setting, received a splashy premiere during Microsoft’s E3 keynote last June. The next month, however, BioWare’s general manager and Anthem’s director, Aaryn Flynn, resigned from the studio. He was replaced by Casey Hudson, the longtime veteran of Mass Effect development.

Jorgensen offered no other details on the Battlefield game coming later this year. The most recent entry in the series was 2016’s Battlefield 1, a critical and commercial success. That followed 2015’s Battlefield Hardline, a cops-and-robbers take on the franchise by Visceral Games, a studio Electronic Arts closed in October. Battlefield had been an annual franchise on consoles and PC from 2008 to 2014.

Source: Polygon – Full