Quote Originally Posted by JackDionne View Post
I was thinking about it a bit more.

Originally the game was going to be released in the Fall of 2018. How would that decision of been made or even contemplated?

That's what I am getting at, it can only leads to mismanagement.
Easily. Again, delays are something that the tech industry got used to a while ago. CA probably wanted to make sure that the fanbase knew it was had a full not-Warhammer game in the works at the beginning of 2018. Leads were probably just asked to ballpark their timeline at an early stage with the knowledge that things could be pushed back.

The original idea was likely trying to shoot for the holiday season of 2018, but since that never even received a precise date, it was probably just an optimistic placeholder while a more detailed schedule was mapped out. Since this was the initial announcement before any kind of feature or gameplay reveal, the game probably just accumulated more stuff that it was going to do in between that and the E3 gameplay reveal where they announced the first delay. They might have not have even fully planned out the simultaneous China release at that point.

Furthermore, remember that the delay was initially to be to "Spring 2019" which it still technically is. March 7th was only put out there in late September of last year, which was earlier than people thought it was going to be. Given what Huberto just brought up, I think this was an attempt by Sega to make the end of the fiscal year. However, given the timing of some of the PR stuff like the webcomic, the livestreams, and the new trailer, plus the lack of a marketing blitz, I think it's likely that a lot of people were planning for a second delay a while in advance, and the Youtuber event might've just been their way of convincing Sega and the fanbase that it was a good idea.

Again, release dates are only hard dates if there are contracts that say they have to be. Since CA doesn't have to worry about physical retailers and there's been no outside marketing campaign, it doesn't lose anything by delaying.