Santa Monica-based game studio Naughty Dog Inc announced today that it has decided to postpone the release of the highly anticipated next entry in the Uncharted series, Uncharted 4: A Thief’s End.

“Let’s start with the good news: Uncharted 4: A Thief’s End is wrapping up production and is shaping up to be the proper send off for Nathan Drake that we’ve promised you,” Neil Druckmann, Creative Director, and Bruce Straley, Game Director, wrote on the official PlayStation blog. “The bad news is that we need a bit more time to finish the game so that it meets our standards and vision. Let’s cut to the chase, Uncharted 4: A Thief’s End has a new release date in North America of April 26, 2016.”

“This is our largest Uncharted game to date, and the team has been working incredibly hard to meet the challenge of closing out the game’s development in a timely manner. However, as we approached our final deadlines and started wrapping up the game’s levels, we realized that several key sequences needed extra resources to bring them to the finish line. After carefully considering all of our options, we decided to extend our schedule, making sure that we get a few more polish passes before submitting our gold master (the final disc for manufacturing).”

“Pushing the date is not an easy choice, and we wouldn’t do it if we didn’t feel in our hearts it’s the best course of action for the game. To you, our loyal fans, we hope you’ll accept our sincere apology. We know many of you have been waiting patiently for Nathan Drake’s final chapter, and now we humbly ask you to wait a bit longer.”

Delays aren’t all bad

Delays, while hardly ideal, are not necessarily a bad then in the world of game development. There are the obvious horror stories like Duke Nukem Forever, but there are also plenty of excellent games that were released late and surpassed expectations.

For example, CD Projekt RED’s The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt had been delayed multiple times before it was finally released, and it has now won multiple Game of the Year awards and has become CD Projekt’s most successful game to date.

Likewise, Nintendo Co Ltd is well known for its delays for first-party games, and Mario creator Shigeru Miyamoto once famously said that “A delayed game is eventually good, a bad game is bad forever.”

Image courtesy of Naughty Dog Inc