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Mighty No. 9 has been delayed once again. This brings the number of delays for the crowdfunded title to three in total. In a Kickstarter update earlier today, creator Keiji Inafune (also known for his creation of the Mega Man series) told backers that the game would be delayed from its February 9^th release date. Stating that the delay was due to matchmaking bugs found within the games multiplayer mode and required more attention and time to fix.

Inafune didn’t offer fans or backers a new release date, instead he offered that “we expect it to realistically be spring of 2016.” Mighty No. 9 created by Comcept, and published by Deep Silver, was scheduled to launch in April 2015, then “Mighty no. 9” was delayed until September 15, 2015, after that it was February 9, 2016. Inafune blamed the delays on a number of setbacks within the games “large number of platforms for the side scroller, and the quality checks that each one needs.”

With over 67,000 backers and over 4 million dollars in funding since its campaign launched in 2013, Mighty No. 9 seem to be a game that will be tossing up a Hail Mary in hopes of having a prosperous launch. Spouting support for such consoles as PS3, Xbox360, XboxOne, PS4, 3DS, WiiU, and PC, it will be hard to see just how successful the game will be if it doesn’t get a solid release date soon. Comcept also delayed the demo of the game for backers when they switched distribution methods.

Inafune has promised that the game will not be delayed again, and that if it is successful, it will have a sequel made. Mighty No. 9s repeated delays have had setbacks elsewhere for Inafune and his Comcept team. Just last summer, Inafune opened another crowdfunding campaign for a successor to the Mega Man Legends franchise, seeking $800,000 and falling very short of his goal.

Comcept has continuously received harsh criticism for its poor handling of Mighty No. 9’s Kickstarter. The controversy surrounding their now ex-community manager Dina Karam didn’t help the game’s struggles either. Inafune has been dropping the ball successfully over the last two years, especially because the game’s campaign was started with a $4 million game that has yet to be delivered. While Red Ash: The Indelible Legend did indeed fail its crowdfunding goal. Comcept still found a publisher for the game’s prologue episode, and that episode will be made.

For now, we’ll look forward to Mighty No. 9’s updates as they come from Inafune and the Comcept team with hope that the game will have a solid launch date soon.

“We have been working up until the very last moment to resolve these issues in order to make the February release, but it has become clear that we no longer have enough time to fix the issues and have everything prepared for release.”

“There are two large reasons for this problem, one of them being the large number of platforms supported (the solution for each platform is slightly different) and the other stems from the fact that the engine we are using is no longer being updated which means adjustments for matchmaking and online code are being made manually (actually reprogramming parts of the engine by the dev team themselves). Unfortunately, this is all a result of miscalculations on the part of us, the development staff.” – Keiji Inafune, Project Lead Comcept Inti Creates

Kenay Peterson
The Gaming Ground
Twitter: @TheDark_Mage