Watch Dogs delayed until Spring 2014 [Update: The Crew delayed too]

Who watches the Watch Dogs? No one, apparently, as they've slipped out from one of Ubisoft's badly guarded outposts and absconded to 2014. Which is to say that Watch Dogs has been delayed to Spring next year. This is so that Ubisoft can "polish and fine tune every detail so we can deliver a truly memorable and exceptional experience," apparently. The delay affects all versions of the game, so the PC version has some company for once.

Here are the relevant parts from the press release:

"Our ambition from the start with Watch_Dogs has been to deliver something that embodies what we wanted to see in the next-generation of gaming. It is with this in mind that we've made the tough decision to delay the release until Spring 2014.

"We know a lot of you are probably wondering 'why now?' We struggled with whether we would delay the game. But from the beginning, we have adopted the attitude that we will not compromise on quality. As we got closer to release, as all the pieces of the puzzle were falling into place in our last push before completion, it became clear to us that we needed to take the extra time to polish and fine tune every detail so we can deliver a truly memorable and exceptional experience."

Assassin's Creed 4, meanwhile, is still on track for a late November release - the console versions, in fact, have had their release dates moved up by a few days. As for Watch Dogs, we'll have to wait till next year - and just after we'd finally got our hands on the game too.

UPDATE: Ubisoft have also delayed their MMOish driving game The Crew, as announced in a financial statement yesterday. Originally scheduled for an early 2014 release, the game will now launch in the 2014-15 fiscal year instead - which starts in April, money fans. The presence of Watch Dogs in that statement means that we can't expect that game any earlier than April either.

Tom Sykes

Tom loves exploring in games, whether it’s going the wrong way in a platformer or burgling an apartment in Deus Ex. His favourite game worlds—Stalker, Dark Souls, Thief—have an atmosphere you could wallop with a blackjack. He enjoys horror, adventure, puzzle games and RPGs, and played the Japanese version of Final Fantasy VIII with a translated script he printed off from the internet. Tom has been writing about free games for PC Gamer since 2012. If he were packing for a desert island, he’d take his giant Columbo boxset and a laptop stuffed with PuzzleScript games.