Deus Ex: Human Revolution delayed

By Wesley Yin-Poole Published 16 December, 2010

Squeenix talks "harsh feedback" to key title.

Hotly anticipated science-fiction role-playing game Deus Ex: Human Revolution is delayed, Square Enix has announced.

Square Enix today pushed the game into its next fiscal year – which begins in April 2011. The Eidos Montreal developed title was due out early 2011.

"With weak sales performance of console game titles that have been newly released during the current fiscal year as well as harsh market feedback regarding a key title, the Group recognizes the reinforcement of development capability in our Digital Entertainment segment as our most critical managerial issue," Square Enix said in a note to investors.

"We therefore have decided to spend additional time to further polish our upcoming game, Deus Ex: Human Revolution, resulting in a shift in release timing from our prior plan of the current fiscal year to next fiscal year."

The "harsh market feedback" regarding a "key title" may refer to embattled MMORPG Final Fantasy XIV, which has suffered under the weight of player complaints since its September launch.

"Additionally, since recognizing that our Final Fantasy XIV service has not yet achieved the level of customer satisfaction that fans of our Final Fantasy franchise have come to expect, we have restructured the development organization and will continue the free trial period until we can present customers with a clear plan outlining Final Fantasy XIV's new direction," Square Enix said.

"Furthermore, we have decided to delay the release of Final Fantasy XIV for the PlayStation 3 Computer Entertainment System, previously planned for early March 2011, in order to include all of the improvements we are planning rather than simply converting the current Windows PC version."

All this contributed to a slashing of forecasted earnings for the current fiscal year. Square Enix now expects sales of 130 billion yen (£991m) and net earnings of 1 billion yen (£7.62m), down from the originally forecast 160 billion yen (£1.22bn) and 12 billion yen (£91.5m).

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About Wesley Yin-Poole

Wesley is Eurogamer's news editor. He likes news, interviews, and more news. He also likes Street Fighter more than anyone can get him to shut up about it.

Read more articles from Wesley by visiting the Wesley Yin-Poole archive page.

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Comments (44) Latest comment 1 year ago

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  • kangarootoo #1 1 year ago

    "With weak sales performance of console game titles that have been newly released during the current fiscal year as well as harsh market feedback regarding a key title, the Group recognizes the reinforcement of development capability in our Digital Entertainment segment as our most critical managerial issue"

    What?!?

    May I take the liberty of translating?...

    "One of our recent games got panned, and didn't sell very well, and we are worried that our next one will go the same way, because it appears we might be a bit rubbish at making games. So we've decided to spend extra time trying not to be."


    This doesn't bode well. Games delayed due to quality concerns frequently don't end up as top flite titles. In this case, that would make me very sad.

  • FreakyZoid #2 1 year ago

    Good. Take your time, get it right. A shit game is shit forever.

  • Razzajazz #3 1 year ago

    Well, extra polish can only help, when has it made a game worse? Saying that, I do kinda share the same concerns as Kanga. Please be good, please be good....

  • hjarg #4 1 year ago

    The latest one getting delayed because of "needs polishing" was Alpha Protocol- and it needed polishing for about half a year or so. And after it was released, it turned out that this was still not enough and it would have needed another boxful of shoe polished before it was shiny enough to put on shelves.
    Makes me wonder- is it the same?

  • JahB #5 1 year ago

    Hate to say it, but that's a good thing. Deus Ex 2 was rushed, and I'm still pissed about that one. At least they're taking their time to get it right.

  • GamesConnoisseur #6 1 year ago

    Yes, even if recent titles performed poorly doesn't mean this one also will, unless they realised their mistaken assumptions of how gullible we would be at handing over hard won cashes for poorly developed titles won't work.

    I really had high hopes for Deus Ex, but now leery of another Kane and Lynch fiasco and SquaEnix is not a trusted brand anymore.

  • Koozer #7 1 year ago

    "This doesn't bode well. Games delayed due to quality concerns frequently don't end up as top flite titles. In this case, that would make me very sad. "

    Ever heard of Valve?

  • kangarootoo #8 1 year ago

    @Koozer

    Well first off, have Valve ever set a date, and then extended that date because they weren't happy with the quality of their product?

    Second, you may have missed the word "frequently" in my previous comment. It doesn't mean the same thing as "always".

  • TheBoyChris #9 1 year ago

    I see this as a good thing - how many times do we hear people on here clamouring for publishers to release games when they're good and not when 'the sales window is open'.

    Good on them for taking their time - I for one believe it'll be more than worth it.

  • barat #10 1 year ago

    Please not "holiday 2011". It's already packed with Gears of War 3, Mass Effect 3, Uncharted 3, ES V Skyrim, Call of Duty 8 and probably Assassin's Creed 3.

  • des #11 1 year ago

    I bet that at least 50% of announced 2011 games will be delayed.The only game that can't be delayed is COD.

  • MadCaddy13 #12 1 year ago

    Very expected

  • dbranchevans #13 1 year ago

    Hey Alpha Protocal is massively underated, totally unfairly panned, combat was a bit rubbish but the storyline was excellent. Improved combat and the same attention to the story could mean Deux Ex could still be good (goes off to find more straws to clutch at)

  • StolenGlory #14 1 year ago

    Hey, anything that flies in the face of the current trend of releasing unfinished dross early in a vain attempt to satisfy the bottom line is A-OK with me.

    Moreso because I actually want, nay need, this game to be nothing less than absolutely fucking awesome.

  • Cronan #15 1 year ago

    Polishing a turd just results in a slightly shinier turd.

  • Triggerhappytel #16 1 year ago

    It's probably a good thing really, as there's a lot of big FPSs out early next year, and being a bit of a hybrid title I expect DX will sell better if it doesn't have to compete with the Cryses; Killzones; Bulletstorms et al.

  • sheldipez #17 1 year ago

    @kangarootoo

    Yes, yes they have. If Valve are not 100% happy with the quality of their product it dont get shipped (or never as is the case with HL2:EP3 - gotta wonder how many alpha builds they've been through).

    "STOP!....VALVE TIME ...
    ..."

    Trying to end on a positive here so will quote Shigeru Miyamoto ...
    "A delayed game is eventually good, a bad game is bad forever. "
    Edited by sheldipez at 16/12/10 @ 10:32

  • kangarootoo #18 1 year ago

    @sheldipez

    Ah ok. I was under the impression that Valve always said things like "soon", but I do see plenty of specific dates in that list.

    All the same, one exception doesn't count for everything and I stand by my original statement. Frequently, when games miss their planned date for quality reasons, the end result is not that great. Game dev is one of those things where you have to get certain things right pretty early on, and if you don't, it takes a prohibitive amount of time to set them right (or sometimes, it means the team isn't capable of getting them right).

    Now that may entirely not be the case here, and I persopnally really hope it isn't, but its a reasonable warning sign.

  • bad09 #19 1 year ago

    I don't really mind early 2011 is cluttered already and a game like Deus Ex would eat up time (I hope!). It's weird in recent year Jan-March has become the new Oct-Dec.

  • kangarootoo #20 1 year ago

    "I'm actually wondering if any of the people that pan alpha protocol actually played the game"

    That does seem to be a startlingly common defense of a game of discussion threads, but it makes no sense when of course every single reviewer will have played the game.

    I haven't played the game in question, so I have nothing to say about it. If its review scores were consistently low, I can perhaps assume a few things.

  • BabyJesus #21 1 year ago

    Thus begins the delays of 2011, who will be next?

  • bad09 #22 1 year ago

    People panned AP because it had almost PS2 like graphics, was incredibly rough and unpolished and they didn't understand the RPG elements that meant the shooting, stealth etc was supposed to be hard at first.

    I liked it myself but it was no cult classic or anything, just an average game.

  • jonbwfc #23 1 year ago

    "Games delayed due to quality concerns frequently don't end up as top flite titles."

    I can't say I've ever heard of a game being delayed before due to quality concerns on a completely different title. That's... novel.

    Was quite looking forward to this. Bah.

  • Moribundman #24 1 year ago

    I pre-ordered the Augmented Edition @ £39.99 2 days before it jumped to £59.99... I'm still keeping that order.

    A mate told me he'd heard there was trouble on the production team for this, so I hope the extra month or two will iron those issues out.

    Hoping this turns out to be Red Dead "polishing" rather than Alpha Protocol "polishing"...

  • Lee_Morris #25 1 year ago

    This was so obvious it's untrue. Still looking forward to the game and it's impressing me more and more with each new info drop.

  • StolenGlory #26 1 year ago

    "Hoping this turns out to be Red Dead "polishing" rather than Alpha Protocol "polishing"..."

    Well Obsidian aren't developing it, so i'm confident it'll be the former type of polishing instead of the latter.

  • SomaticSense #27 1 year ago

    Good that they don't seem to be rushing it, and seem to actually understand that a game's quality matters. But like Kangaroo says above, a game which gets delayed due to quality concerns, ALWAYS ends up shit.

    Without exception.

  • kangarootoo #28 1 year ago

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mythica...

  • bad09 #29 1 year ago

    @MilkybKid1985

    Well I did say "almost". :)

    Serisously though AP looks bloody awful for a current gen title. It's a very similar game to Mass Effect in gameplay and look at the huge difference in quality.

  • X3Entente #30 1 year ago

    Dont care , i had little hope for dx3 anyway. even if eidos montreal were genuine fanboys of the original, the organ grinders at sqenix would still force them to make a linear health regen cover based fps, based purely on cod's sales. games were better 10 years ago
    /plays original

  • levitate #31 1 year ago

    I have this on pre-order already. Doesn't really matter if it comes a few months later, it might actually mean the game will be playable and fun.

  • kongzi #32 1 year ago

    "2010 was a crap year, we didn't make money because we put out a lot of sub-par product and now our investors are mad at us. They made us shelve our only good title for the year, so they can be sure in 2011 their stock will rise again and they can sell it off at a nice profit."

    Those gameplay demos for Deus Ex were some of the most polished, fully featured, unscripted alpha (yes, alpha) footage i've seen in a while.

  • BuddyChrist #33 1 year ago

    @freakyzoid
    Too true.
    This is meant to be a true Deus ex game. Homage to the classic. Not "another one" like those Final Fantasy turds
    They keep crapping out

  • PearOfAnguish #34 1 year ago

    "Hate to say it, but that's a good thing. Deus Ex 2 was rushed, and I'm still pissed about that one. At least they're taking their time to get it right"

    Invisible War was far from being a bad game. It'll be a surprise if Human Revolution is even as good as that.

  • SniperZoz #35 1 year ago

    noooooooooooooooo

  • Rens11 #36 1 year ago

    take note obsidian!

  • spekkeh #37 1 year ago

    While probably right about the quality concerns, I think you mistranslated, kangarootoo. Note the way they talk about 'fiscal years'.

    I think it would more accurately translate like this:

    "Holy crap, this game was abysmal and we're not making a lot of profit this year. Better move our big sellers to next year, so we can write this year off for being crap, but next year we'll make superduperly more money..

    OH HAY CORPORATE SUIT ZOMBIES, thank you for joining us at this board meeting. As you can see our company is not in a very good point right now, but I made some very important managerial changes. Now look at this graph where we predict how our profit will turn out next year. OH LOOK IT DOESN'T EVEN FIT ON MY CAREFULLY CHOSEN AXES. Isn't that awesome? I did that, just for you.

    Next point on the agenda, ratifying my bonus for this year."

  • kangarootoo #38 1 year ago

    @spekkeh

    Ahh, well spotted. More fool me for thinking quality might be part of the picture :(

  • Feanor #39 1 year ago

    "This doesn't bode well. Games delayed due to quality concerns frequently don't end up as top flite titles. In this case, that would make me very sad."

    Half-Life 2 got delayed a whole year in the most embarrassing manner imaginable, and it turned out fantastic. A game being rushed out in spite of quality concerns is much worse than a game that gets delayed.

  • kangarootoo #40 1 year ago

    Jesus, what is wrong with you people. So one company delayed a game, and it turned out well. Somewhere someone's granny is smoking 40 fags a day and living to 101, but both are the exception instead of the rule.

    On the whole, when games get delayed because of quality, the end result is poor. ON. THE. WHOLE. One person mentions Valve, and the rest of your turn into those little green aliens out of Toy Story.

    Jeeeez.


    Edit: "A game being rushed out in spite of quality concerns is much worse than a game that gets delayed." and I agree with this, which is why I didn't not say it (sort of thing).
    Edited by kangarootoo at 16/12/10 @ 14:17

  • miseryguts #41 1 year ago

    The least surprising bit of "news" i've heard in quite some time..

    The delay is almost certainly caused by the poor performance & critical feedback of FF13, this does not bode well for Human Revolution it wouldn't be the first time delays for "polishing" resulted in hastily implemented redesigns of core features in the light of a recent success or failure, either to avoid the same fate or to emulate the success.
    Edited by miseryguts at 16/12/10 @ 15:13

  • darc #42 1 year ago

    Shame. It sounds like they're reallocating staff to stop the FFXIV hemmorraging, i.e. by developing patches and additional content (for FFXIV). Personally I wish they would just let FF bleed out, and get back to shipping Deus Ex on schedule.

  • darkmorgado #43 1 year ago

    Square Enix now expects sales of 130 billion yen (£991m) and net earnings of 1 billion yen (£7.62m), down from the originally forecast 160 billion yen (£1.22bn) and 12 billion yen (£91.5m).

    If this turns out to be accurate, will it be a profit or loss? And year-on-year is it growth?

  • ISeeEverything #44 1 year ago

    Deus Ex: Human Revolution delayed + Facebook - 11 people like this. = MADNESS