In a move that wasn’t entirely unexpected, Irrational Games announced this week that BioShock Infinite has been delayed once again. The game will now be released on March 26, one month later than expected.
A Joystiq report quotes Irrational Games Creative Director Ken Levine as stating the studio needed the extra month to polish the title and fix bugs. Levine name-dropped Irrational’s new Executive Vice President of Development Rod Fergusson as a major factor in the decision. Fergusson left his job as Epic Games’ director of production in back in August to join Irrational, presumably to helm the completion of BioShock Infinite.
BioShock Infinite was just one of the many games that are currently scheduled to launch in February 2013. Dead Space 3, Aliens: Colonial Marines, and Tomb Raider, just to name a few, are scheduled to pack February with blockbuster gaming titles. However, it is generally suspected that these release dates are very tentative placeholders, and that most of those titles will be delayed to their real release dates sometime in the near future.
The development of BioShock Infinite has been plagued with delays and concern. The February release date itself was a delay from it’s original release date of October 2012. Irrational had lost several key developers last year and progress on BioShock was “lacking needed focus,” according to unnamed sources at the studio. In August, the studio finally focused, hiring Fergusson and dropping a planned (but unnecessary) multiplayer component from the game.