Despite the popularity of video games during this period of social distancing, with a 75% increase in play time, the video game industry has also been hurting because of COVID-19.
Many game developers are now working remotely due to the virus such as developer CD Projekt Red working on Cyberpunk 2077. This has caused development to slow down for games in progress and for games already scheduled for release to get delayed.
Minecraft Dungeons from Mojang was pushed from April to May 26. Wasteland 3 from inXile was pushed from late May to August 28 to make up for new development conditions. These however are examples of minor hindrances within the industry.
Both, The Last of Us Part II and Iron Man VR, from PlayStation, were pushed indefinitely because of the pandemic. Neither game has a new release date. Sony will release an update when they do.
Development was nearly complete on The Last of Us Part II, as it was in the final stages of de-bug.
The game however was delayed for economic and logistical reasons.
“The Last of Us II was on track for May, multiple devs [development teams] say. The primary reason for the delay is the challenge of printing, shipping, and selling physical games right now,” tweeted Jason Schreier, a news editor for Kotaku, a gaming blog.
This highlights another issue that exists outside of game development. Many of the game disc and cartridge manufacturers are not in operation due to lockdowns and quarantines.
Most games are sold digitally now, however many developers still value physical copies of games. There are still parts of the world and even the United States that do not have reliable internet access which makes physical media necessary.
We have already seen an impact with physical game manufacturing with the remake of Final Fantasy VII. The game will be released on the scheduled date, April 10, but Square Enix has confirmed that there will be a shortage of physical copies.
Despite the development challenges, the game industry has found some success during this era.
DOOM Eternal and Animal Crossing: New Horizons, which both launched on March 20, broke sales records.
Animal Crossing is currently the fastest selling Nintendo Switch game in Japan with 1.88 million copies sold in three days.
DOOM Eternal had its best launch in series history with the game doubling the launch revenue of its predecessor.
Console sales also saw a boost in March. The demand for the Nintendo Switch skyrocketed which resulted in the three-year-old hybrid being sold out in retail.
Every industry on the planet has been impacted by the Coronavirus. We will see more video games get delayed this year. The health of all the people who create and enjoy video games is more important right now.
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