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Mojang Moves Cobalt To February 2016
Minecraft’s Cobalt, which was demoed for Xbox One at Gamescom, has slipped into next year. You won’t need to wait long into 2016, though. Mojang expects it to be available in February.
The competitive action game developed by Oxeye was originally scheduled for release this Friday, October 30. Unfortunately, while the game is largely done, bug squashing is taking a bit longer than expected.
“We’ve been working on Cobalt for a long time and, though the game is feature complete, our current build is buggier than we’re comfortable with. We want every part of Cobalt – the campaign, challenges, and local and online multiplayer to live up to your expectations, no matter which platform you play it on. That’s going to require a bit more development time,” Mojang writes.
If you’re wondering why quality assurance takes four months, well, it doesn’t. The certification and release process on consoles is a process that requires a bit of time.
“In honesty, we don’t need four months to fix the outstanding issues, but releasing a game on console is an especially complicated business,” the team writes. “There are release windows, and certification things, and all kinds of boxes that need to be ticked before games can be released into the wild.”
For more on Cobalt, you can check out our coverage from Gamescom.
[Source: Mojang]
Our Take
February might be a better release window for Cobalt, rather than competing against the noise of major triple-A releases. And it’s always better to release a game with fewer bugs, even if that means more time in the oven.
What’s interesting is that we rarely hear developers and publishers directly comment on certification timing. This statement should help consumers understand why seemingly little changes can result in long delays.
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