Minecraft developer Mojang has announced that the game it plans to publish next, Cobalt, has been delayed until 2016.
Developed by Oxeye, the game was due for release on Friday, October 30th. The game is almost done but bug squashing is going to take longer than possible.
“We’ve been working on Cobalt for a long time and, though the game is feature complete, our current build is buggier than we’re comfortable with. We want every part of Cobalt – the campaign, challenges, and local and online multiplayer to live up to your expectations, no matter which platform you play it on. That’s going to require a bit more development time,” Mojang commented on its website.
Quality assurance alone doesn't take four months, the certification and release process on console does.
“In honesty, we don’t need four months to fix the outstanding issues, but releasing a game on console is an especially complicated business,” Mojang says. “There are release windows, and certification things, and all kinds of boxes that need to be ticked before games can be released into the wild.”