‘Mighty No. 9’ Nails Delay Hat Trick, Multiplayer Issues Push Release Back Again

Keiji Inafune’s spiritual successor to Mega Man, Mighty No. 9, was struck with its third delay on Monday. The Kickstarter-backed game was planned to be released on February 9, but has now slipped to the spring of 2016 due to issues with multiplayer.

Inafune announced the delay on the Mighty No. 9website, along with the same note to backers on Kickstarter. The Comcept founder apologized for disappointing fans and backers with yet another delay while admitting there were no excuses.

A new release date was not given for Mighty No. 9 beyond mentioning the developer “realistically” expects the game to launch in spring 2016. However, there’s always the wiggle room that it could slip further by stating they are waiting make sure everything is confirmed before announcing a specific date.

What caused the latest delay? Issues with the game’s multiplayer and matchmaking that affected all platforms Mighty No. 9 is launching on PS4, Xbox One, Wii U, PS3, Xbox 360, PC, PS Vita, Nintendo 3DS.

“In preparation for the February release of Mighty No. 9 we have been working hard with our partners to resolve any network issues and porting work necessary to publish Mighty No. 9 on the various platforms. However, the issues relating to the network modes were more critical than expected, and it has become apparent that we will need to delay the game from its February 9th release date. We have been working up until the very last moment to resolve these issues in order to make the February release, but it has become clear that we no longer have enough time to fix the issues and have everything prepared for release.

“The reason for the delay is rooted in bugs inside the network modes, and specifically problems with matchmaking. There are two large reasons for this problem, one of them being the large number of platforms supported (the solution for each platform is slightly different) and the other stems from the fact that the engine we are using is no longer being updated which means adjustments for matchmaking and online code are being made manually (actually reprogramming parts of the engine by the dev team themselves).”

Mighty No. 9 raised over $3.8 million via Kickstarter with the promise to bring a spiritual successor of Mega Man to modern gaming. The game was originally supposed to launch in May 2015 before being pushed to September just weeks before launch. Another delay announcement was made in August to push the game to a February 2016 releae. And now, the latest delay pushes the release to spring 2016.

Backers of Mighty No. 9 are just as frustrated at the last minute delay announcements as the actual delays themselves. Sadly, it has been issues with the multiplayer component that has been responsible for the last two delays. It was added to the game as one of the many stretch goals to the Kickstarter campaign. Presumably, the amount of work needed to get the online portions of the game is what Inafune refers to when he states the Comcept development staff miscalculated.

Due to the delay of the game, solely for the multiplayer while the single-player was complete, Comcept had a large portion of its development staff without work. This led to a second Kickstarter for Red Ash – The Indelible Legend. This forced another apology and explanation from Inafune as fans, unaware of the jobs on the line, thought the studio was stretching itself to thin.

Mighty No. 9 and Red Ash are not the only games on Comcept’s plate. The studio partnered with Armature Studio to work on ReCore, an Xbox One and Windows 10 exclusive action-adventure game. The title was revealed in a stunning CGI trailer at E3 2015 and is expected to release in the second half of 2016.

[Image via Comcept]