New World, Amazon Game Studios’ action-MMO, has been delayed again and will now launch in full on Aug. 31, the company announced this week. The news comes about six months after a preview event involving thousands of players, and lots of feedback and data for developers to gather.
The upshot of that data is that while Amazon Game Studios has polished and expanded the combat system and weapon variety, and added other new features, it’s still not ready to hit its previously announced spring 2021 launch. New World gets another six months of work then, with a closed beta beginning on July 20. Those who have pre-ordered New World will get access to the closed beta.
Amazon Game Studios originally targeted a May 2020 launch for New World. The company first pushed it to August 2020 in light of the coronavirus outbreak last spring, and then to spring 2021.
New World was one of the first three PC games that Amazon Game Studios announced it was developing, back at TwitchCon 2016. Of the other two, Breakaway (a multiplayer brawler) was canceled during development, and Crucible (a free-to-play multiplayer shooter) launched in beta last year before its studio announced development would end in October.
New World boasts 50-on-50, siege-style combat set in a fictionalized continent resembling the one conquered by European explorers in the 1500s and 1600s. With such a premise raising eyebrows, Amazon Game Studios has repeatedly pointed out that it is not intending to make a historical presentation; supernatural, nonhuman forces form the PvE adversaries, and player factions will be according to rival guilds (or “companies”) rather than nationalities.
For more on what it entails, see our preview from the August 2020 event.
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