Games postponed due to pandemic: how is development affected?

In March 2020, as the coronavirus began to spread rapidly across the United States, the video game business was having its best month in over 10 years. Spurred on by the releases of Nintendo's "Animal Crossing: New Horizons" and "Call of Duty: Modern Warfare" by Activision, millions of people sheltering there have turned to video games for entertainment.

Sales of hardware, software, accessories and gaming cards topped $1,6 billion in March — "the highest spend recorded for a month of March since the $1,8 billion achieved in March 2008," according to the report. monthly from the NPD Group.

But by March 2021, the industry could start to see the broader effects of the coronavirus. Games planned for release next year and beyond are likely to have development issues that could lead to delays or cancellations.

Deferred titles:

We've seen a lot of games that were due for release at some point this year have issues and get delayed. Among some popular examples is the already-released The Las of Us: Part II, which was planned to be released on May 29, but was not released until June 19. Cyberpunk 2077 is one of the most anticipated games of the year that was supposed to be released on April 16th, then pushed back to September 17th and now to November 19th. Final Fantasy VII: Part II has also had its development impacted and may take a long time to release. The latest delay is with Mafia: Definitive Edition, which was supposed to be released on August 28 but now goes to September 25. But why do so many delays happen?

In fact, the most affected games are games we don't even know about yet, games planned for next year and beyond. "During the summer, early fall? Those games are fine," said Phil Spencer, Microsoft's Xbox lead. "Games targeting a year from now or beyond? There will be some impact, but they will be able to react."

Releases from 2021 onwards will be more affected

Many of these titles have yet to be revealed, but all blockbuster games take years to produce, with hundreds or thousands of people working in offices around the world - something that has become nearly impossible during a global pandemic. Studios cannot remotely do the motion capture ("mocap") or audio work needed to put the finishing touches on a game.

"Mocap (motion capture technology) is just something that's basically stopped. We're not going to mocap studios," Spencer told Business Insider. "If you've had all your animation captured and you're retouching more individual artistic productions and areas like textures and stuff, you're in a better position. If you're expecting a lot of big audio work - when it comes to symphonies and things - or mocap, you're at a standstill now and making progress in the remaining areas possible."

Annual sports franchises like "Madden" and "FIFA" are a good starting point. "It's really those [types of] games that try to finally pull together their entire asset base in terms of artistic output that they can have the biggest impact," Spencer said.

The launch of the Xbox Series X is also hampered:

One thing that seems to still be on the way: Microsoft's video game console, the Xbox Series X, which is slated to arrive this holiday season. Spencer is overseeing the launch of Xbox Series X - his first new Xbox console as head of the Xbox team at Microsoft.

"While we're obviously not traveling to China, we feel good about our hardware progress," Spencer said. "I have my console and I play on it almost every night, and I feel good about the software updates we're doing."

That doesn't mean the release won't be totally affected, "some things that would be released might have to be changed a little bit". Regardless, Spencer remains confident not just in the upcoming Xbox console release, but in the gaming industry as it struggles to deal with the fallout from a global pandemic.

"I'm pretty confident in the industry's ability to continue with a steady stream of games," he said. "There are currently a lot of games in production across the industry, and I think we'll be - as an industry - we'll be fine. I'm optimistic about what that means in the long term. games, even if there's a certain impact in a certain release window. for certain titles that we will be able to see."