Outriders won’t be out this year after all. The game’s been delayed until February 2, 2021.
People Can Fly, best known for Bulletstorm, announced the news in blog post today over on Square Enix’s website. The shooter RPG with a Diablo-like loot system was originally slated to have arrived last summer back when it was first revealed at E3 2019. The studio then announced earlier this year that it wouldn’t actually be out until sometime this holiday. Now the cross-gen game will hit PS4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S, and PC early next year instead, due at least in part to issues around the ongoing pandemic.
“Covid-19 has certainly affected our operations over the past months, but the teams have all worked extremely hard to adapt to changing circumstances,” the game’s community manager wrote. “While the core game is now in a largely complete state, our testing operations were unfortunately among the most affected by the work-process-restructuring caused by the novel coronavirus. To that end, we need a bit more time to get it right and ensure that the Outriders experience will be as smooth and issue-free as it possibly can be when we launch.”
The good news is that the cross-gen game will support cross-play on all platforms when it launches, and also support free upgrades for anyone who starts on PS4 or Xbox One and later decides to move to a PS5 or Xbox Series X/S respectively.