Last week, Behaviour Interactive and Namco Bandai announced a release date for Warhammer 40,000: Eternal Crusade — September 23 — but it surprised gamers by its apparent exclusion of the European and console markets. In Behaviour’s state of the game this week, the team explains its plan.
“There is about a 3-month lead time to get a gold candidate into a box and on the street for consoles, but on Steam it just takes a push of a button on a Steamworks webpage,” writes Senior Producer Nathan Richardsson. “Now I consider myself mildly insane at best, and even I would be able to push that button within a minute. Moving the console release back gives us more time to work on the game with our entire team than we previously had, before we launch it on console.” Furthermore, he says, Bandai Namco plans a “marketing campaign and boxed release in Europe.”
Richardsson also explains that the studio has “never cut any features […], only moved them into a free expansion,” meaning that post-launch, there’s more content on the way, some of which is already in production. And he again explains that the game is still founded on MMO principles.
“The framework is already in place and the philosophy we use is the same as most other games of late that aren’t MMORPGs: MMOs. Massive as you play in the same world as hundreds of thousands of other players. Multiplayer because you’re either competing with or against other players.”
Here’s his mockup of the gameplan from here on out:
