| Hi everyone, it's Jason. If the video game you've been looking forward to playing this year has gotten delayed, don't worry. You're not alone. Delays were common even before the emergence of a deadly pandemic that has disrupted workplaces across the world. But with Covid-19 forcing game developers to work remotely, the industry has found itself dealing with more production issues than usual at the same time that people are stuck at home and clamoring for more games. Game sales may be up, but development has slowed to a crawl. In January, the makers of Hogwarts Legacy said the game was pushed back to 2022, instead of rolling out this fall. It was the first domino to topple, followed by Sony Corp.'s PlayStation 5 exclusive Returnal (delayed by about six weeks, to April), Ubisoft Entertainment SA's Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time remake (delayed indefinitely from a March debut), and The Lord of the Rings: Gollum (delayed to 2022). Amazon has struggled to break into the video games industry, as my colleague Priya Anand and I recently reported. So it was no surprise to see that the upcoming Amazon game New World received another delay, this time to August from spring, following a setback last year too. (At one point, the New World team was aiming to release the game in 2018, we learned during our reporting.) That's all on top of the delays we'd already heard about last fall, including blockbusters like Far Cry 6 (postponed indefinitely) and Halo Infinite (pushed back to fall 2021 from fall 2020). Even gaming's powerhouses are feeling the pandemic's effects. On Wednesday, Nintendo Co. aired a 50-minute livestream to announce new games coming to the Switch console. Although the event contained some fun surprises, like a new entry in the stylish Splatoon series, fans were generally disappointed by the lack of new titles from blockbuster franchises like Metroid and The Legend of Zelda. During the presentation, Nintendo producer Eiji Aonuma apologized in advance for not being able to share more gameplay footage from the highly anticipated sequel to Breath of the Wild.
There's no set release date for that game but fans were hoping for an update. Nintendo made it clear in 2020 that Covid had disrupted its development pipelines. "Please be aware that the impact on game development in terms of both hardware and software may potentially increase as the amount of time spent working remotely increases," President Shuntaro Furukawa told investors last May. It's safe to say there will be many more games delayed this year. Even when vaccines become broadly available and normal life begins to resume, the effects of the pandemic on video game production will last for months, if not years to come. —Jason Schreier | 
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