Forspoken delayed to January 2023, is in “final polishing stage”

The question of Forspoken’s release date has been up in the air for some time. The last date given by developer Square Enix was October 11 of this year but there was a level of concern among those anticipating the game that it wouldn’t hit that release date. As it turns out, that concern was valid — it won’t.

As announced by the game’s official Twitter account, the studio has made “the strategic decision to move the launch date of Forspoken to January 24, 2023.” The message also attempts to assuage anyone who’s concerned about the state of the game, saying that “all game elements are now complete, and development is in its final polishing phase.” The announcement ends with a thank you for the community’s “continued support and patience” during the game’s delays.

Yes, that’s “delays,” plural. This isn’t the first time Forspoken has been pushed back. In March of this year, it was delayed to the aforementioned October 11 date. At that time, Square Enix said the delay was needed to give the game more polish — the exact same reason for this new delay, in fact. The game was recently rated by PEGI, receiving a mature rating for the European region. Beyond the mature label, the simple fact that it was rated seemed to reinforce the October 11 date, but that hasn’t turned out to be a guarantee. Tuesday, January 24 ought to be it.

Forspoken is headed to PlayStation 5 and PC next year, and the PC version in particular should be noteworthy for some players. It will be among the first DirectStorage supported titles on PC — that’s Microsoft’s storage tech that’s meant to accelerate load times and streaming data. Additionally, Forspoken is one of the games headlining AMD’s FSR 2.0 supersampling tech. FSR 2.0 will be supported by the game’s PC version on day one.