Kojima Productions’ first major AAA title to be released outside of the publishing umbrella of Konami has hitched itself to the delay train, and the game will no longer be out whenever it was originally supposed to be out.

According to Metal Gear Informer, there’s an article that has gathered information from a couple of different sources that seem to indicate that Death Stranding has been delayed and is a “little behind” the planned release date. The original information comes from an interview that Hideo Kojima had with Japanese media outlet J-Wave.

Kojima explained…

“It’s common for studios to fall behind their planned release date, and Death Stranding is very slightly behind our initial plan, but not behind by much,”

Again, since the game doesn’t have a release date it doesn’t really mean much that the game is slightly “behind” the initial plan or release date since we don’t know what “slightly behind” even means in this context. Does that mean it won’t be releasing this holiday season? Next year? A few months from when it was supposed to release? Weeks off from its schedule? Days? Hours?

According to Twinfinite there is an internal release date that Kojima Productions is working with, and there’s been a slight hiccup, but there isn’t a “large delay”.

Apparently some changes and compromises had to be made to the game, but what those compromises are aren’t discussed and we don’t really know what corners had to be shaved off to put the game back on the internal schedule. The game was announced back in 2016, so a two and a half to three year development cycle using an existing engine like the Decima Engine would make sense if it were scheduled to release at some point in 2019. Of course, that still doesn’t really explain how the delay fits into that since we don’t know when Death Stranding was originally supposed to release.

The game looks interesting as players take on the role of Norman Reedus as he carries objects around and delivers them. Why? I don’t know. But there are some ethereal foes that he faces off against and they seem to attempt to waylay him. According to Kojima you’ll be able to deal with enemies with violence or in non-violent ways. I suppose that’s Kojima retaining some of the gameplay variety from the Metal Gear Solid series.

Death Stranding is scheduled to release on the PS4 at some unannounced point in time. However, if the delay is significant enough, it wouldn’t be surprising if it turned out to be a launch title for the PlayStation 5.

(Thanks for the news tip Eric Otness)