News – Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night Delayed Until 2019
It’s sad news for anyone who was hoping to delve into the spiritual successor to Castlevania in time for Halloween (so most of us right?), as Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night has now been delayed again, this time until some point in 2019. This announcement came from creator Koji Igarashi himself via a post on the game’s Kickstarter campaign. In this post Igarashi explained that this delay was being done in order to “raise the quality level” following player feedback from a demo that was provided to backers.
Our first announcement is that the game will now launch in 2019. The most important reason for this is to raise the quality level, especially after all the very valuable feedback from the Beta Backer Demo.
Unfortunately this wasn’t the only bad news, as Igarashi also announced that the planned PlayStation Vita has met the same untimely fate as the once planned Wii U version. That is to say it has been cancelled. The Symphony of the Night creator explained that this action was being taken not due to quality reasons, but more due to Sony’s recent decision to end production of physical Vita releases and certain online features.
The second announcement is that the game will no longer launch on PlayStation Vita. This decision is largely due to Sony’s plans to discontinue the Vita console, ending production of physical copies and stopping certain online store support features.
All in all, this means that the hotly anticipated spiritual successor to Konami’s iconic Castlevania series will now arrive potentially more than two years after it was successfully backed in March 2017. It will also release with two less platforms than originally promised. Though in fairness the Wii U version was sensibly replaced with a highly desired Nintendo Switch version.
Nevertheless, Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night is still currently planned to release on all major PC platforms alongside Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, and Xbox One and looks set to be one of the most important retro revivals in recent years. There may be a little longer left to wait, but for now Metroidvania fans can keep their anticipation levels high by enjoying the latest story trailer for the game that was released 2 months ago. Or alternatively by jumping into Bloodstained’s wonderful 8-bit stretch goal game, Bloodstained: Curse of the Moon. A game that ties into the upcoming Ritual of the Night.