Mass Effect: Andromeda pushed back to early 2017

Yet another piece of evidence has appeared indicating that BioWare's space epic RPG Mass Effect: Andromeda won't be out until sometime in early 2017. This one comes from Electronic Arts Chief Financial Officer Blake Jorgensen, who said at the Morgan Stanley Technology, Media and Telecom Conference yesterday that it's slated for the fourth quarter of EA's fiscal year.

“We've got our Battlefield first-person shooter game coming in the third quarter, and our third-party title that Respawn, our partner, built, called Titanfall, it's the second title that they brought into that brand. Both of those are first-person shooters and will be targeted around both the fast, action-driven shooter market, as well as the strategy-driven market in the quarter,” he said. “We have all our sports games. We have our Mirror's Edge runner game, it's first quarter. and then we have Mass Effect, which is a sci-fi action game, in our fourth quarter. So big year ahead and we're pretty excited."

EA's fiscal year runs from April 1 to March 31, so while the fourth quarter of the calendar year would mean a release sometime between October 1 and December 31 of 2016, which is when it was expected to be out, in this case it indicates January 1 to March 31 of 2017. It's possible that it could be moved up, but come on, when is the last time that happened?

(It was about a year and a half ago, actually.)

So it's a delay, but it's not necessarily an indication of anything problematic. It's quite possible that EA simply doesn't want to put all its eggs into the very crowded holiday-season basket, especially since, to mix metaphors, it's already got two big dogs—Battlefield 5 and Titanfall 2—in that fight. I've emailed EA to confirm the new launch window, but it's probably safe to assume that if EA's CFO says 2017, then 2017 is what it is.

Thanks, NeoGAF.

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Andy has been gaming on PCs from the very beginning, starting as a youngster with text adventures and primitive action games on a cassette-based TRS80. From there he graduated to the glory days of Sierra Online adventures and Microprose sims, ran a local BBS, learned how to build PCs, and developed a longstanding love of RPGs, immersive sims, and shooters. He began writing videogame news in 2007 for The Escapist and somehow managed to avoid getting fired until 2014, when he joined the storied ranks of PC Gamer. He covers all aspects of the industry, from new game announcements and patch notes to legal disputes, Twitch beefs, esports, and Henry Cavill. Lots of Henry Cavill.