High on Life recently got pushed back to a December 13th launch on Xbox Game Pass (despite Microsoft's release date oopsie last week), and the developer has now revealed a reason for the delay, or part of the reason at least. Basically, it has a lot do with avoiding the big guns this fall.
In an interview with GamesRadar, High on Life developer Mikey Spano said that one big reason for the delay was to avoid "missing out on the conversation", with the likes of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 and God of War Raganarok launching in October and November, respectively.
Those two titles dropping in the next couple months wasn't the only reason for High on Life's delay though. The team also needed the extra time to improve the game's middle act, which at one stage wasn't quite as polished as act one and three.
At least we've got plenty of new gameplay to watch over and enjoy while we wait! High on Life showed up at Gamescom 2022 in a big way, including with a full 25-minute gameplay demo.
Will you be playing this one day one on Xbox Game Pass? Do let us know below!
[source gamesradar.com]
Comments 17
I would had been playing this over GoW or CoD but I guess I’m on the minority.
I’m not paying $70 for any PS5 game, and I’m not paying a penny for ActBliz games until Kotick is gone.
So for me, it’s just a shame that games feel they need to avoid these kinds of “competition”.
Someone else wants to pay $70 for a buggy game at launch, great. Have fun. Did it for Horizon, regretted it. Game still getting progression bugs patched regularly.
I agree with @Tharsman
Understandable...will play all 3
@Tharsman was just gonna say the same. GoW would've have overshadowed some of the GP releases this year, but no chance I'm paying the launch prices on Sony's games.
To that end I'm really looking forward to High on Life, Plaguetale and the one I'm looking forward to the most, Pentiment
High On Life was such a great surprise during it's announcement trailer earlier this year. It was the game I most was looking forward to that day and am eagerly awaiting it now.
It reminds me mostly of Oddworld Strangers Wrath, but with over the top humor. Gimme
@Tharsman Yep I'll give Acti games a go once they're on Game Pass - I've not given Kotick money for many years now.
Playstation I'm still on the PS4 and can wait for everything to go to their version of Game Pass before I finally get a PS5 (nearly always get both consoles) when it finally shrinks both in price and size, and can enjoy them at their best.
So High on Life would have been a welcome Oct/Nov game - but guess for December it'll make a nice holiday season game given Starfield was my big plan!
Looking forward to playing this and will give it ago on GP.
As for others on here about the £70 for GOWR.
I will be paying and playing simple as that.
Like I admitted on here if Halo Infinite had been the campaign game it should have been say like HFW open world and biome wise etc I would gladly have paid £70 for Halo Infinite.
I want the best quality in all areas and if it means £70 be it HFW or Halo Infinite at their respective best and top end AAA then I would pay, rather than £50 for a half arsed Halo Infinite, which is what we got.
Think about it.
Halo Infinite as it was £50
Halo Infinite at the top of its games massive AAA the best Halo Campaign and multiplayer ever for £70.
I’m not interested in CoD though I’ll definitely be playing GoW Ragnarok. We also have Gotham Knights in October which will hopefully be good. Plenty to keep me going until High on life comes out.
Delaying games due to conflicting releases use to make sense, but does it still make sense in a digital and Game Pass world?
With GP, the players are there anyway. At launch, and after. You don't need to really convince them to put down extra money for your game.
Unless you are worried it just looks bad if your game doesn't get highest numbers possible at launch, why not just stealth launch the game and do the heavy marketing after the big releases have faded down?
Because honestly, the dev and publisher have to eat those extra costs during the delay, when you could at least be reaching those who have no interest in those big titles.
@Dezzy70 I'd gladly pay £70, or even £100, for a Halo game that is finished at launch (with all expected features like co-op, split screen, and forge) and includes at least a year of content support (as in actual maps, vehicles, and weapons, and maybe some cosmetics) included in that cost, and absolutely no micros.
@Dezzy70 Same. I'll pay the 70 for GoWR and Halo Infinite, if it's a complete version.
@Rafie
I think seeing the UK charts today and over the last year, yes people will pay for true AAA quality if it is a game they like.
If we like it not that is what Sony strive to do and have really found their market, just in a different way Nintendo have found their market.
You could argue currently Xbox have found theirs but I wouldn’t exactly call it a successful market at the minute, limping around in third with not much to show AAA wise for all of 2022.
Perhaps they happy as they are, will be interesting to see next year 2023 if they start to venture into Sony game strategy with big quality AAA games or sort of stay with well it’s sort of AA/AAA ie Halo Infinite but great value at £50 or game pass. I do wonder if that is their market goal.
@Tharsman how do you know this won't be buggy at launch , you got a crystal ball or something lol
@Tharsman Understand your sentiment.
But for me if GOW:R is anything close to the 2018 game in terms of quality and polish. If it releases complete, without MTX or DLC then personally I don't mind paying $70 for a top quality AAA game, and I suspect many are in the same boat.
That said I have held off on buying several PS5 games that I personally didn't think were worth $70 day 1 and will continue to do so. The higher price is a turn off especially when Game Pass and PS+ have so many good titles each month too, happy to wait for a price drop.
Looking forward to High on Life, hopefully the extra month or so can be put to good use and it releases extra polished.
@themightyant my issue is: how will we really know the games are launching bug free? For some reason Horizon had stellar reviews and no bug reports that I know of. Maybe most reviewers didn’t finish the game, or the mythical Sony fear of being blacklisted might be real, but those reports didn’t show up until weeks later (that I saw them.)
But honestly, me personally, I still would now wait for a sale regardless, because I don’t want to foster the $70 price and still have one big backlog to go through. Like I said at the start, though, I realize I am likely in the minority.
@Tharsman NO AAA game launches bug free nowadays, it's just not possible with the size and scope of games with so many interwoven systems and hundreds/thousands of developers. All we can hope for is that the bugs are minor and not game or immersion breaking. And that any discovered post-launch are fixed quickly.
Personally had very few bugs in Horizon Day 1 though I know others have had some. I think Aloy was stuck dry-humping a wall for about 10 seconds before being catapulted into the air (more humorous than anything) and I had a moment where it dropped to like 5fps. (had to restart to fix) and one where a robot was invisible until I hit it. But nothing that ruined the game or stopped me playing it. The game was just so good and large that a few minor and occasional bugs like this didn't bother me. If they did I never would have played more than an hour of Skyrim.
I saw plenty of reviews mention these bugs though, some more than others, but almost all of them said it didn't impact their enjoyment. Skill Up even showed how bad the pop-in occasionally was for him, it was truly awful (though that never happened to me like that in over 100 hours of play) but again he specifically said it shouldn't impact what was a truly excellent game.
I still wait for reviews and will wait for discounts on many games, even more so if they are $70, but some games are too good to wait for. I hope GOW:R is one of them. There's little else launching this year of that scope.
@themightyant minor bugs like you described are not the ones that bothered me, but the ones that would entirely block story progress and require some to either stop playing or roll back several hours of play.
Last patch I paid attention to the notes makes it sound like they are still patching progression-halting bugs.
@Tharsman I've seen those in patch notes. E.g. "Fixed an issue in Main Quest "The Broken Sky" where Dekka would be standing behind the throne and cannot be interacted with." Yet in all the chat online they don't seem to be that widespread. Besides reloading the last checkpoint will fix it in almost all cases, even if it's a little annoying it's rarely progression halting.
Again it's related to scope. Horizon is now far more like something like the Elder Scrolls or the Witcher with so many overlapping systems that you are always going to get unexpected things happening that simply can't all get caught during QA. They'll patch any they are alerted to by their in game tools and forums, but at some point you either decide to play it or you don't.
Personally I was amazed how polished it was considering the giant scope of the game and the massive potential for things to go wrong. Thought it set a pretty high bar compared to Elder Scrolls, Witcher 1-3 etc.
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