konnichiwa said:
Well that's what makes it weird, the game is finished |
This was due to logistics reason, as in the post from Sony, not development reason. The game is finished according to Naughty Dog - they are just bug-fixing. But logistics refers to the unknown aspect of making the physical copies and, more importantly in this case I am thinking, the shipping aspect.
We just saw this play out with FF7R. Square-Enix warned they can't control the shipping of the title. Usually when a large-scale game ships, it goes to the warehouses at UPS/FedEx/whatever shipping company is in that country, with an embargo date of "do not deliver until such-and-such time." This takes up valuable warehouse space during those weeks until the retail date arrives.
Since we are in a pandemic, almost all shipping companies are (rightly) prioritizing keeping their warehouses efficient so they can get in needed medical supplies and household items and ship them out as fast as they can. They don't care about keeping thousands of copies of a game until a certain date, or may not get them in right away at all if it means space lost to more important things. That is why FF7R is already released in Australia (shipping companies didn't want to keep the stock in their warehouses) and might not ship on time in other countries (most likely a lot of Europe, especially Spain and Italy).
It was too late for FF7R I am sure since generally you start mass-producing a game 4-5 weeks ahead of time. But we all know Naughty Dog, and i know they wouldn't want an entire country getting the game two weeks early - or not getting it on time at all. They want everyone to experience their new story at the same time.
