Massive Entertainment’s managing director David Polfeldt has spoken about how the delay of Ubisoft’s Watch Dogs has reassured other first-party developers working for the publisher.
”It’s tremendously important for us as a developer studio,” said Polfeldt in an interview with the Examiner, ”to know that the owner and the publisher are ready to take that hit, and (the Watch Dogs delay) was a massive hit. I think their shares fell 25% on the day it was announced it was being delayed. It takes so much courage to live through that day and still think that was a good decision. So for us in the development (side of things), that’s an important message that ultimately the management will back up the goals that we have, which is the game has to be great.”
Watch Dogs was originally planned to launch alongside next generation consoles at the end of 2013, however Ubisoft delayed the game in order to make sure that it was of the required quality. It’s now coming out May 27 this year.
Polfeldt also praised Ubisoft for not pushing for strict deadlines at the expense of quality. ”Definitely when we go to the internal milestones, we’re constantly being pushed for more innovation, thinking further, what could you do that surprises even ourselves? What are we not doing that we could do? Have you studied the competition? So there’s never a discussion about ‘just get it done guys, hurry up, we have a deadline, and it doesn’t matter if it’s really perfect, just get it done.”
Massive’s open world shooter The Division is currently planned for release in the fourth quarter of 2014, but there’s no concrete date set as yet.
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