BioWare’s general manager, Aaryn Flynn, took to the official Mass Effect website and announced that the upcoming sci-fi epic being published by Electronic Arts for the Xbox One, PS4 and PC, will officially launch on Tuesday, March 21st, 2017 in North America. Those living in Europe will be able to get their hands on the game just a couple of days later on March 23rd, 2017.

According to Flynn, since this is the first time that Mass Effect will be running on the Frostbite game engine, they wanted to take some extra care and time to get it right. They allowed certain studio members to take a build home and play it over the holiday break, where they gathered feedback on whether or not they were on the right track, with Flynn writing…

“Over this holiday break, developers at BioWare took home a version of the game in what we call the “holiday build”. This is a longstanding studio tradition that goes back to the early days of the original Mass Effect. Many load up a PC or console and go home to play as much as possible at their leisure. Coming back from holiday, the feedback has been great. Getting the endorsement from members of our studio, many of whom played key roles on the original trilogy, was definitely a key factor in helping us lock in on the date”

A new gameplay trailer is set to go live later today, and from then on it’ll be the home stretch as they promote the title leading up to release in just two month’s time.

Microsoft sort of let the beans slip early when they revealed a release date on the Games on Demand page, resulting in all kinds of wild speculation about the release dates for various games, including Injustice 2, which director Ed Boon denied was releasing on the date that Microsoft had listed.

In the case of Mass Effect: Andromeda, it appears Microsoft was at least kind of close.

Some gamers are still apprehensive about the title coming off the way EA and BioWare handled Mass Effect 3, unwilling to acknowledge the game had issues and for a while blaming their own community for a rather curt ending.

Things began to escalate between the community and BioWare when Manveer Heir made some racist comments that many felt were inappropriate. Whether or not this has an actual effect on the sales of Mass Effect: Andromeda remains to be seen.