Fresh headline from the playstation blog. It's release being pushed from October 23rd to November 20th.

Was October too busy for new releases? Perhaps they're having trouble caging a bandicoot? Will they talk about this at all during their Gamescom conference tomorrow? I don't entirely mind personally, I can just devote more time towards X-Com in early November.

Have a lovely day.

@Opus: I'm guessing that all of the complaints about the lack of a health bar and/or some other things got to them and they've decided to incorporate some of the complaints of the Beta.

@Opus: I'm guessing that all of the complaints about the lack of a health bar and/or some other things got to them and they've decided to incorporate some of the complaints of the Beta.

They better use that extra time to add Mr. Mosquito

@TurboMan said:

@Opus: I'm guessing that all of the complaints about the lack of a health bar and/or some other things got to them and they've decided to incorporate some of the complaints of the Beta.

There's no way they're going to change the core mechanics of the game in one month -- those decisions were made years ago. This is probably little more than netcode tweaks, bug fixes, and balance changes. The talk about incorporating feedback may well be cover for some crippling bug QA discovered at the last minute.

No offence intended, but I'm always amazed by how little understanding gamers have of the development process.

Why don't I have the beta yet.

I know they're using part of that time to finish inserting a brand-new UI, but my understanding was that this wasn't going to actually cause a delay. They were supposed to be completely locked down by now. Maybe they're rolling their first DLC update into the game itself to put some surprises back into the roster? That's a costly move, but it'd give them more runway, more time for PR to line up character reveals and get people "pumped" about the game and such. Dunno. It's a weird move, either way.

@GrantHeaslip said:

@TurboMan said:

@Opus: I'm guessing that all of the complaints about the lack of a health bar and/or some other things got to them and they've decided to incorporate some of the complaints of the Beta.

There's no way they're going to change the core mechanics of the game in one month -- those decisions were made years ago. This is probably little more than netcode tweaks, bug fixes, and balance changes. The talk about incorporating feedback may well be cover for some crippling bug QA discovered at the last minute.

No offence intended, but I'm always amazed by how little understanding gamers have of the development process.

I think he just means giving more feedback onscreen on what is happening, not really adding new mechanics. UI changes like that can definately be done in a month.

@Jeff said:

I know they're using part of that time to finish inserting a brand-new UI, but my understanding was that this wasn't going to actually cause a delay. They were supposed to be completely locked down by now. Maybe they're rolling their first DLC update into the game itself to put some surprises back into the roster? That's a costly move, but it'd give them more runway, more time for PR to line up character reveals and get people "pumped" about the game and such. Dunno. It's a weird move, either way.

There you go, they are actually changing the UI.

Well this means I have an extra month to save up for it.

@jozzy said:

@GrantHeaslip said:

@TurboMan said:

@Opus: I'm guessing that all of the complaints about the lack of a health bar and/or some other things got to them and they've decided to incorporate some of the complaints of the Beta.

There's no way they're going to change the core mechanics of the game in one month -- those decisions were made years ago. This is probably little more than netcode tweaks, bug fixes, and balance changes. The talk about incorporating feedback may well be cover for some crippling bug QA discovered at the last minute.

No offence intended, but I'm always amazed by how little understanding gamers have of the development process.

I think he just means giving more feedback onscreen on what is happening, not really adding new mechanics. UI changes like that can definately be done in a month.

@Jeff said:

I know they're using part of that time to finish inserting a brand-new UI, but my understanding was that this wasn't going to actually cause a delay. They were supposed to be completely locked down by now. Maybe they're rolling their first DLC update into the game itself to put some surprises back into the roster? That's a costly move, but it'd give them more runway, more time for PR to line up character reveals and get people "pumped" about the game and such. Dunno. It's a weird move, either way.

There you go, they are actually changing the UI.

My understanding was that the game has no concept of health/damage -- is it tracked but just not surfaced? If so, then yeah, they could surface it and my mistake, but if not, adding it in at the last second would completely change the core mechanics of the game. It would be like deciding to make a recharging health FPS into a finite health FPS when the game is months from release.

@GrantHeaslip said:

@jozzy said:

@GrantHeaslip said:

@TurboMan said:

@Opus: I'm guessing that all of the complaints about the lack of a health bar and/or some other things got to them and they've decided to incorporate some of the complaints of the Beta.

There's no way they're going to change the core mechanics of the game in one month -- those decisions were made years ago. This is probably little more than netcode tweaks, bug fixes, and balance changes. The talk about incorporating feedback may well be cover for some crippling bug QA discovered at the last minute.

No offence intended, but I'm always amazed by how little understanding gamers have of the development process.

I think he just means giving more feedback onscreen on what is happening, not really adding new mechanics. UI changes like that can definately be done in a month.

@Jeff said:

I know they're using part of that time to finish inserting a brand-new UI, but my understanding was that this wasn't going to actually cause a delay. They were supposed to be completely locked down by now. Maybe they're rolling their first DLC update into the game itself to put some surprises back into the roster? That's a costly move, but it'd give them more runway, more time for PR to line up character reveals and get people "pumped" about the game and such. Dunno. It's a weird move, either way.

There you go, they are actually changing the UI.

My understanding was that the game has no concept of health/damage -- is it tracked but just not surfaced? If so, then yeah, they could surface it and my mistake, but if not, adding it in at the last second would completely change the core mechanics of the game. It would be like deciding to make a recharging health FPS into a finite health FPS when the game is months from release.

Yeah, I think you are right about the health mechanics not being in there and it being a core thing to build in. I just think he meant is as adding more feedback, but I could be wrong of course.

Glad that they're going to work on the UI. That kind of stuff matters to me at least.

With how the game looked I was expecting this, and for what it's worth I hope the final product turns out good.

@Jeff said:

I know they're using part of that time to finish inserting a brand-new UI, but my understanding was that this wasn't going to actually cause a delay. They were supposed to be completely locked down by now. Maybe they're rolling their first DLC update into the game itself to put some surprises back into the roster? That's a costly move, but it'd give them more runway, more time for PR to line up character reveals and get people "pumped" about the game and such. Dunno. It's a weird move, either way.

This is interesting as well. I definetly feel like there hasn't been much 'hype' for the game since its announcement, which is both weird seeing how close it is to release and bad considering the fanservice-y nature of the entire thing.

The UI seems like a weird thing to have to delay the game over. Especially in a game where it's beneficial to downplay the UI so it doesn't obscure the action. Is the delay due more to a hyped release window or poor use of development time, I wonder?

@Opus said:

Have a lovely day.

Hey, thanks! You too!

Just in time for black friday! This delay might end up biting them right in the goat ass though. Isn't the Wii U supposed to launch sometime in November?

@RockmanBionics: If anything, the game's initial reveal was handled poorly and didn't do much to generate buzz other than "Oh, hey, they're making a Smash Bros. knock-off." And when they showed the game at E3, it looked boring and simplistic. The recent Quick Look of the beta didn't look much better. The way that character reveals have been handled also haven't been given the amount of hype that Smash Bros. character reveals would normally generate. I don't know how an extra month could possibly help in that regard, especially since they're booting the game's release into a window that's sure to be dominated by a lot of other big launches.

@Hailinel: Mm, I have always been for a "Smash Bros with Sony characters" but I haven't been feeling this game at all. As for the extra month, who knows, if they start pumping out a ton of well made character 'reveal' trailers and manage to get some unleaked extra characters in they might be able to salvage some of it, but I think most people's minds are already made up.

I'm mostly just surprised that the hype engine for this game has done such a poor job. I mean this is people's nostalgia we're dealing with here, in a gametype that is basically fanservice incarnate, it shouldn't be this hard to sell.

I watched a few of the trailers and one thing that stood out to me was the lack of any recognizeable music. I think the thing that sells stuff like MvC, Dissidia and Smash Bros. specifically is that it manages to be a complete package. This hasn't shown signs of being this thus far.