Interest and hype surrounding Ubisoft’s competitor to Call of Duty, XDefiant, has hit an all-time low after it was revealed today the shooter missed yet another launch window in February and has reportedly been pushed back by a further few months.
After numerous delays throughout the end of 2023, sources revealed to Insider Gaming that XDefiant would also miss its new projected release date of late March, which was set in Ubisoft’s Q3 2024 earnings report. It’s the latest in a long line of missed dates and targets according to the sources who said that the pursuit of CoD has set XDefiant back so often. “The neverending hunt to chase CoD and add pointless stuff always breaks the current build,” a source supposedly said to Insider Gaming.
XDefiant executive producer Mark Rubin dispelled these claims in an X (formerly Twitter) response earlier this evening. “Nothing about our delay is due to any new features—in fact not much has changed from a gameplay standpoint,” Rubin said, adding that the delays stemmed from ongoing issues that the team has continued to address. “Whoever said chasing CoD in Tom’s report was [a] major eyeroll.”
Rubin then provided a more in-depth update an hour later, confirming XDefiant will not have skill-based matchmaking—a major selling point mentioned back in 2023—and that his team had been hard at work on the “major” technical issues encountered over the past six months. “Nobody launches perfect bug-free games. We do our best but it’s just not realistic to think that.”
Originally set for mid-2023, XDefiant has been in a constant state of delay but hype around the community was in overdrive after June’s majorly-successful open beta. Now, without a chance to get their hands on the game as well as some high-profile releases such as Modern Warfare 3 and THE FINALS, players are losing interest fast.
Here’s hoping the next update (and potentially another open beta test) will spark interest again in the lead-up to the game’s eventual release—whenever that is.
