The magical adventuring of Hogwarts Legacy has been postponed from a planned ‘Holiday 2022’ release to the early part of next year. Howarts Legacy will now be coming to PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, PlayStation 4, Xbox One and PC on 10th February 2023, with the Switch launch to be revealed soon.
Hogwarts Legacy will launch on February 10, 2023 for PlayStation, Xbox, and PC. The Nintendo Switch launch date will be revealed soon. The team is excited for you to play, but we need a little more time to deliver the best possible game experience. pic.twitter.com/zh0EsOvDb7
— Hogwarts Legacy (@HogwartsLegacy) August 12, 2022
The few extra months of development will primarily be focussed on polishing the game as much as possible, with the Twitter announcement stating that “The team is excited for you to play, but we need a little more time to deliver the best possible game experience.”
Given the number of game delays we’ve seen in the past couple of years, another game delay shouldn’t be that surprising. Warner Bros. themselves are no stranger to this situation, with pretty much their entire slate of games, from Gotham Knights and Suicide Squad to Lego Star Wars and Hogwarts Legacy all significantly delayed. At least they’ve taken to heart some lessons from notable disaster game launches in recent times.
The game is set in the 1800s, casting you as a newly enrolled student at Hogwarts. Perhaps unsurprisingly, you are able to tap into an ancient form of magic that is being awoken in a way that could alter the future of the Wizarding World.
Avalanche Software has been on the case developing the game, but it’s not been the smoothest sailing. One of the main problems for Warner Bros. to navigate has been that Harry Potter author JK Rowling decided to reveal to the world that she’s an awful transphobe, a fact that has left a lot of people considering their fandom and whether or not they’re willing to engage with the franchise anymore.
Beyond that, there’s just the difficulties of developing a huge, big budget game and doing so in the midst of a pandemic that completely alters how developers can work and collaborate together. Having been rumoured for years leading up to its 2020 reveal, Hogwarts Legacy was originally expected to release in 2021, but just a couple of weeks into 2021, it was delayed. Earlier this year, they pencilled in a ‘Holiday 2022’ launch, but we know how that went…