Ubisoft has delayed Assassin's Creed Shadows until February 14, 2025, stating the team needs more time to refine the game.
Assassin's Creed Shadows, the eagerly anticipated next game in the franchise set in feudal Japan, was set to come out on November 15, 2024. But the company needs more time "to polish and refine the experience, pushing further some of our key features," according to a statement posted on X (formerly Twitter) attributed to the game's executive producer Marc-Alexis Côté.
Ubisoft will refund all preorders for the game, and those who choose to preorder the game in the future will be given the first expansion for free.
Journalist Stephen Totilo posted a quote on X attributed to an Ubisoft financial update that while the game is actually feature complete, lessons the company learned from the Star Wars Outlaws release led them to give the game additional time for further polish. Totilo also noted that the game will launch on Steam on day one.
Fans of the series have been excited for Assassin's Creed Shadows to finally get to play as both samurai and shinobi, as the two main characters Yasuke and Naoe respectively. This is also the first Assassin's Creed built for the current generation of PS5 and Xbox Series X consoles, resulting in some technological leaps in environmental rendering, as Ubisoft told CNET at Gamescom.
Read more: Assassin's Creed Shadows Upgrades the AC Engine By Leaving PS4, Xbox One Behind
Assassin's Creed Shadows was also important for another set of platforms not commonly known for gaming: Apple's ecosystem. Côté himself appeared during the tech company's WWDC 2024 presentation in June stating the game would arrive on Mac and iPad on the same November 15 launch date.
Watch this: Assassin's Creed: Shadows Is the Class of Ubisoft's Iconic Game Franchise
00:49