Ubisoft has delayed its open world hacking game Watch Dogs and open world racing game The Crew until Spring 2014, making a delay of almost 4 months. Both the titles are company’s big projects. The games have already attracted a large number of gamers and onlookers, this long delay might cause significant decrease in the company’s profits.

All Versions Of Watch Dogs and The Crew To be released in Spring 2014

Massive sales were expected from Watch Dogs, which was set to release In North America on November 19th and November 22nd in Europe for Microsoft Windows, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 3, Wii U, Xbox One and Xbox 360, but now Ubisoft has postponed the game back to release between April 1 and June 30, 2014. The Crew only targets next-gen consoles and Microsoft windows, it was never assigned a specific release date but Ubisoft said it would be released in-between July 1 and September 30, 2014.

Following statement was posted by Ubisoft on the behalf of Watch Dogs development team on Ubisoft Blog:

"Our ambition from the start with Watch Dogs has been to deliver something that embodies what we wanted to see in the next-generation of gaming. It is with this in mind that we’ve made the tough decision to delay the release until spring 2014.
We know a lot of you are probably wondering: Why now? We struggled with whether we would delay the game. But from the beginning, we have adopted the attitude that we will not compromise on quality. As we got closer to release, as all the pieces of the puzzle were falling into place in our last push before completion, it became clear to us that we needed to take the extra time to polish and fine tune each detail so we can deliver a truly memorable and exceptional experience.
We would like to take this opportunity to thank all of you. We thoroughly enjoy and appreciate the way you respond on the web, at events, press conferences and other opportunities we have to interact. Your passion keeps us motivated.
We can’t wait to see you in Chicago next spring. We are confident you’ll love this game as much as we love working on it."

CEO of Ubisoft, Yves Guillemot also expressed his thoughts in the following lines.

"Our long term goal is to win the next generation. The tough decisions we are taking today to fully realize the major potential of our new creations have an impact on our short-term performance. We are convinced that, longer term, they will prove to be the right decisions both in terms of satisfaction for our fans and in terms of value creation for our shareholders. We are building franchises that will become perennial pillars of Ubisoft’s financial performance. In a context of growing successes for mega-blockbusters, the additional time given to the development of our titles will allow them to fulfill their huge ambitions and thus offer players even more exceptional experiences.
Fueled by strong momentum for PlayStation 4 and Xbox One, calendar 2014 will see the return of growth to the console market. Combined with the quality of our line-up and our strong financial situation, this growth will allow us to achieve record operating income in fiscal 2014-15 and 2015-16."

With that being said, players can do nothing but wait. However, the statements increase the expectations of gamers. We can expect a higher quality of work. Graphics is the main thing that would separate the next-gen from current-gen, if Ubisoft delivers what is promised, than the delay won’t put a major impact on sales of the games but still Ubisoft has lowered overall company sales targets for the year. The expected sales of the year for the games on the original release date were between €1,420 million and €1,450 million, but after the delay the sales of one year are predicted to be somewhere in-between are €995 million and €1,045 million.