BioWare fans will have to wait longer to play the studio’s next new game: It will now be released during publisher Electronic Arts’ 2019 fiscal year, which runs from April 2018 through March 2019.
EA CEO Andrew Wilson made the delay announcement this afternoon during an investor call for the end of the company’s 2017 fiscal year. Three months ago, on a call for fiscal Q3 2017, Wilson said EA expected BioWare to release the game by the end of March 2018, the conclusion of EA’s 2018 fiscal year. That means this delay could be as little as a few weeks or — more likely — anywhere from a number of months to a whole year.
In January, Wilson described the project as an “action-adventure, not RPG” title, although he said the game will still have plenty of RPG-style character progression. Today he reiterated that it will be a “live service,” which suggests it could resemble games like Bungie’s Destiny or Ubisoft’s Tom Clancy’s The Division in its setup.
“We’re very pleased with the progress of our new action IP from BioWare,” Wilson said today on the call. “The design is stunning. Gameplay mechanics are excellent, and the action will be exhilarating. The game is built around a live service, and through our creative process, we decided to add more to the disruptive new social design for our players. To accommodate that, we are moving the launch date for this project into fiscal year ’19.”
Blake Jorgensen, EA’s chief financial officer, hinted that the online component contributed to the delay. “We want to further develop the live service component,” he said.
BioWare general manager Aaryn Flynn said that the studio has been working on the unnamed game and its universe since 2012. This will be the first new intellectual property from BioWare since 2009, when the studio kicked off the Dragon Age franchise with Dragon Age: Origins.
Update: We’ve updated this article with a quote from Wilson describing the game.