Well, there goes another delay as Square Enix, and the Outriders Team have announced that Outriders is being delayed. Originally slated for a February 3rd, 2021 release date, it has now been bumped to April 1st, 2021. No, that’s not an April’s Fools Joke; it is an odd time to move the date release to.
The extra time will be spent on “fine-tuning the game and focusing on delivering a fantastic play experience at launch.”. I know this comes across as a bummer, as I was really looking forward to playing Outsiders next month. At the same time, I’m all for developers taking as much as they need to work on a game. We all saw what happened with Cyberpunk 2077, and no one wants a repeat of this. Especially seeing how a similar mess could completely doom a game such as Outriders.
There’s a bit of good news, though, as a demo will be released on February 25th, 2021. This demo looks to be fairly beefy and will include access to all four classes; Devastator, Pyromancer, Technomancer, and Trickster. Single-player and co-op will also be in, and everyone will be able to check out the first few hours of the game. Lastly, all progression from the demo will transfer over to the full game. Can I say that this is completely awesome and I hope other developers/publishers follow this example?
Outriders is an upcoming looter shooter title developed by People Can Fly and will feature both single-player and co-op experiences. The game is not a Games As A Service, and Square Enix has been very vocal about this. Nor will it include microtransactions, and it isn’t a Free to Play title; it seems this comes up a lot. Outriders also will support cross-play support, and you’ll be able to play alongside and against those on other platforms.
Outriders will now be released on April 1st, 2021, and available on the PS4, Xbox One, and PC. The title is also backward compatible with the PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X|S, and enhanced versions for those platforms will be released later.