Video games are incredibly hard to make. Be it the cost to create them, the staff needed to actually develop a game, or something else behind the scenes, a lot can happen to take it off course. While it’s sad for players, developers know best what their game needs, and time is almost always something developers could use more of. Sometimes, though, time can’t fix everything, and in those cases, games can find themselves stuck in what’s known informally as “development hell.”
This is a term used to describe games seemingly stuck in development forever. No matter what those development teams do, more and more barriers get in the way, and all of a sudden, a game misses its release date by a couple of months, then a year, then multiple years, and in some unfortunate cases, we just don’t ever hear about the game ever again. Here are five games stuck in development hell.
Part 1 of 3 in Game Informer's series detailing games that might be stuck in development hell.
Pikmin 4
Pikmin is a special franchise to many people, but despite its niche popularity, it’s never reached the heights of other Nintendo franchises. In total, the franchise has only sold around 8 million copies. However, Pikmin 3 Deluxe proved the franchise still had some (fruit) juice in it by selling roughly 2 million units in less than a year – a quarter of the series' entire sales – and fans have speculated that its financial performance could dictate the future of the series and the development of Pikmin 4.
Pikmin 4 was mentioned by series creator Shigeru Miyamoto back in 2015 when he told Eurogamer that it was in development and “very close to completion.” Time passed and then Hey! Pikmin, a 2D Pikmin spinoff, was announced and then released in July of 2017, and some speculated that this was the Pikmin 4 Miyamoto was referring to back in 2015.
Now, this is certainly a possibility, especially considering we haven’t heard a peep about Pikmin 4 since 2017, but in June of that year, Miyamoto told Eurogamer that “it is progressing.”
If Hey! Pikmin was Pikmin 4, it’d be odd to say Pikmin 4 is still in the works just a month before Hey! Pikmin hit 3DS. If a game is about to come out in a month, developers don’t typically say “it is progressing” when referring to its development in the final month; the game has likely gone gold and is being further optimized and cleaned of bugs.
However, that was the last Nintendo or anyone there referred to Pikmin 4, so where it’s at today is anybody’s guess. Here’s hoping Pikmin 3 Deluxe’s 2 million units sold sends a clear message to Nintendo that fans are ready for its sequel.
Skull & Bones
Skull & Bones has been in development for years and years and there’s still no sign that it will be releasing anytime soon. It was announced in 2017 as a you-play-as-the-ship-not-the-pirate multiplayer-focused game set in the Indian Ocean during the Golden Age of Piracy. For those familiar with Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag, it was basically the ocean-faring portion of that game broken off and spun into its own full release – or so it seemed.
Game Informer went hands-on with Skull & Bones back in 2018, and even at that time, there was no planned release date, although Ubisoft was aiming for a 2019 release. There was a beta planned and players could sign up for it starting in 2018. That beta still hasn’t happened.
In May of 2019, Skull & Bones was delayed to at least March 2020, just a couple of months after news broke that Skull & Bones would be getting a TV show to coincide with the game’s release. Things went quiet for over a year and Skull & Bones slipped past its 2020 release date. Then, in September of last year, Ubisoft announced that it had no plans to show it during its upcoming Ubisoft Forward showcase.
At that point, it had been years since anyone last saw Skull & Bones publicly and excitement around the title had almost certainly shifted to wondering: where is this game? In May, Ubisoft announced that Skull & Bones was scheduled to release sometime between April 1, 2022, and March 31, 2023. And so we arrive at some bittersweet news about Skull & Bones: it’s finally in Alpha, but getting to this point was apparently extremely difficult.
A new report from Kotaku revealed that it was originally set to be an expansion to Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag before Ubisoft pivoted to it becoming an MMO tie-in for a game called Black Flag Infinite (that never came out, by the way). Then, it was turned into its very own IP. What this full-fledged pirate nautical warfare game turns out to be, only time will tell. However, a recent Ubisoft financial report released last week reveals that the company intends to release Skull & Bones in the "next fiscal year." We've seen it slip from release windows before, though, so there's no guarantee it's a sure fire release for next year.