Just last week, rumors began popping up across the web: could Dead Island 2 be released sometime during 2022? Although the title’s development has been horribly rocky, industry insider Tom Henderson posted a YouTube video claiming that this could be the case. ” “According to everyone that I’ve been speaking to… the game is in a decent state and it could be announced pretty soon with some kind of gameplay trailer. A release date expected to be somewhere in Q4 2022, possibly leading up to next year if there are any problems with the development cycle,” he said.
During an earnings presentation today, Embracer Group, the parent company of Deep Silver, confirmed that the game is still in development, and 2023 is a more realistic release window.
“It very clearly is [still alive], and I at least expect the release this financial year, or sorry next financial year I should say,” said Oscar Erixon, equity research analyst at Carnegie.
“I can’t talk about Dead Island 2 because it’s not announced as such from the publisher. But we have just talked about [that] we have one unannounced AAA title… that you think is Dead Island 2, so it’s hard for me to comment further on that,” said Embracer CEO Lars Wingefors.
While this conversation provided nothing concrete, it does hint at the long-awaited sequel getting a release date soon. The game was first announced in 2014. Yager Development was originally hired to develop Dead Island 2 in 2012, but was removed from the project in 2015. Sumo Digital took over in 2016, but they would also be replaced with Dambuster, an internal studio of Deep Silver, in 2019.
Dead Island 2 does not currently have a release date. While the game was initially expected to be released on PlayStation 4 and Xbox One, new rumors have surfaced implying that it may launch on current-gen consoles as well. It is also rumored to be an Epic Games Store exclusive on PC. In 2020, a leaked version of the game from 2015 made its way online.
