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Bandai Namco lost a big franchise when Dark Souls wrapped up back in 2016 with Dark Souls III. The company wants to continue with the Soulsborne genre, though, by having a game like Code Vein release for home consoles and PC. It picks up some of the features that From Software developed for Dark Souls, such as highly difficult bosses, low HP, and skill-based combat. Gamers who have been desperately looking forward to Code Vein will probably be disappointed to find that the game's original release window, set for this fall on the PC, PS4 and Xbox One, has been pushed back all the way into 2019.
The news was revealed via a tweet by the official Bandai Namco Twitter account, which said on July 11th, 2018 that Code Vein has officially been delayed.
The letter from the company thanks fans for checking out the gameplay demo that was on display at E3 and featured at this past year's Anime Expo. The company states that, due to the feedback that gamers provided the company based on the public demonstrations, the studio heads felt it wise to delay the release of Code Vein in order to improve on the gameplay and make it even better. The game was originally supposed to be out at the end of September.
The idea is that the company actually wants Code Vein to exceed the expectations of gamers, and that it should deliver above and beyond what people think they're getting with the upcoming hack-and-slash, action-RPG.
Most of the gamers are quite understanding of the delay, as they want the game to be good and Bandai Namco obviously wants to deliver a good game. As Nintendo creative director Shigeru Miyamoto once said, "A delayed game is eventually good, but a rushed game is forever bad."
It's important that Bandai Namco gets things right with its new IP because you only get one chance at a first impression when you release your product into the public marketplace, and the one thing you don't want is for people to pick apart the game for having lots of bugs, glitches or just overall poor gameplay. A similar thing hampered Mass Effect: Andromeda's release, causing a lot of negative reviews to pile in and plenty of negative sentiment to foster within the communities, leading towards poor sales. Electronic Arts ended up shelving the game for the time being.
Given that Dark Souls was a pretty decent cash cow for Bandai, there really is no reason to risk shortchanging the potential success of the new IP that could possibly end up replacing Dark Souls.
That's not to mention that releasing the game this fall alongside Rockstar Games' Red Dead Redemption is a death knell unless the name of your game is Call of Duty; but even then there's no guarantee of wide success.
We don't know when in 2019 Code Vein will release, but it's unlikely that it'll be any further out than a first or second quarter release for home consoles and PC.
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