Published , by Ozzie Mejia
Published , by Ozzie Mejia
There isn't much that's left for Electronic Arts to release for 2023. Outside of the usual sports fare, the publisher's biggest title is the Ascendant Studios debut effort Immortals of Aveum. Falling under the EA Originals indie label, Immortals of Aveum has generated some buzz with its focus on first-person magical warfare. Unfortunately, the release date spell needs a little more time to activate, so Ascendant Studios has announced that the game's arrival will be delayed slightly to August.
Here's the message from the Ascendant Studios website:
Your reactions to Immortals of Aveum™ over the past few weeks has been incredibly inspiring – from our trailer at the PlayStation Showcase, and the recent hands-on previews, to the latest gameplay reveal, and being named one of the most anticipated games from Summer Game Fest. It’s been amazing.
As you know, this is our first game as a self-funded independent studio. We set out five years ago to ambitiously make an original Magic FPS in a new fantasy world. Along the way, we worked through a pandemic, built a new team, developed on Unreal Engine 5.1 and pushed the boundaries of what we thought was possible. Now, the finish line is in sight.
The recent feedback to the game proves to us what we already felt: that Immortals of Aveum is something special. In order to realize our full vision, we are going to take a few extra weeks, making our new launch date Tuesday, August 22nd. This will give us time to further polish the game, finish optimizing all platforms, and deliver a strong launch. We owe it to ourselves and to you to get this right.
Shacknews has seen quite a bit of Immortals of Aveum in the past several months, and it has impressed every time we've seen it, as we've attested to during a recent hands-on preview. Ascendant Studios is led by original Dead Space creator and former Sledgehammer Games creative director Bret Robbin. His team has worked to craft a different kind of single-player military campaign, one focused less on guns and more on magic.
Immortals of Aveum was previously slated to release on Thursday, July 20. The new move to Tuesday, August 22 is interesting because now the game is about to be in competition with an EA juggernaut: Madden NFL 24, which is set to release on August 18. It wouldn't be the most egregious case of EA titles cannibalizing one another, but one would think that the publisher would want to give this potential new franchise every opportunity to succeed.
Whether this new delay does Immortals of Aveum good remains to be seen. We'll find out when it comes to PC, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series X|S on August 22.