Mass Effect: Andromeda has officially slipped from its nebulous 2016 release to “early 2017.” While this news surprises no one considering we’re already well into 2016 and have not heard anything about the game other than its name, the news is still disappointing for those out there itching to get back into the universe that Shepard built (read: me.)
EA CFO Blake Jorgensen stated at a recent conference:
We’ve got a great year ahead… we’ve got our Battlefield first-person shooter game coming in the third quarter, and our third-party title that Respawn, our partner, built, it’s called Titanfall, it’s the second title that they brought into that brand. Both of those are first-person shooters and will be targeted around the fast, action-driven shooter market, as well as the strategy-driven market in that quarter… We have our Mirror’s Edge runner game this first quarter, and then we have Mass Effect, which is a sci-fi action game, in our fourth quarter. So big year ahead and we’re pretty excited.
Of course, the “fourth quarter” of the 2016 fiscal year in the video game industry maps to the first quarter of the calendar year 2017. While it’s nice to get a window, I fully expect that Andromeda will get delayed again, pushing the release past March 2017.
In any event, we’ll most likely get some Mass Effect: Andromeda information to whet our appetite at this year’s E3.