With a little over a week left until E3, Monolith Productions has announced that Middle-earth: Shadow of War will not make its previously scheduled release date in August. The highly anticipated sequel will now be launching in October 2017. The post from a Monolith community manager regarding the delay can be read below.
“Middle-earth: Shadow of War will now launch worldwide on Oct. 10, 2017.
Middle-earth: Shadow of War expands gameplay in every dimension, including the massive open world, the story, the RPG systems, and personal player stories of the Nemesis System. As with Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor, Monolith is committed to delivering the highest quality experience. In order to do this, we have made the difficult decision to move our launch date to ensure that Middle-earth: Shadow of War will deliver on that promise.
We understand that it might be disappointing to have to wait a little longer for the release and are sorry for the delay, but we are working hard to make an amazing game. We’re excited to show more at E3.”
Certain territories such as Australia, New Zealand and Japan will have a later release date.
Middle-earth: Shadow of War will be an Xbox Play Anywhere title and is coming to Xbox One, Project Scorpio, PlayStation 4, and PC. Even with the delay, we’ll likely see gameplay of it running on Project Scorpio at Microsoft’s E3 press conference on June 11. Seeing as it is now releasing in the fall, it is possible is could now be launching with Project Scorpio, which currently has a release window of fall 2017. At the very least, people will have to wait less time before getting to play Shadow of War on Scorpio.
Source: WB Games
Jennifer is a games journalist, former games journalist and PR Manager at Gearbox. They contributed 234 articles to ICXM between 2015–2017, focused on opinion pieces, game reviews, Windows and PC, and Xbox news: went on to write for Windows Central and later managed PR for Gearbox Software.