While Ubisoft originally targeted XDefiant to be released during summer, which was then pushed to sometime in mid October, it seems more time in the oven is needed, as the dev team has announced that the XDefiant release window won’t be met, and the game has been delayed with no concrete timeframe or date for when it’ll be available.

• Related Reading: XDefiant Has Content Planned for “Many Years to Come,” Devs Weren’t Ready to Launch Game in Original Window

This was announced by the official XDefiant Twitter account, where the following message was shared:

A Message From the XDefiant Team 

Thank you to everyone who participated in our recent Public Test Session and continues to stand alongside us as we build XDefiant. The PTS once again showed us your appreciation for our fast-paced gunplay, uniquely crafted maps, objective-driven modes, and iconic Faction roster.

But it also surfaced some inconsistencies in the game experience that we need to address prior to launching our Preseason. So we’ve made the hard decision to delay the Preseason of XDefiant.

The team will continue working to address these issues and testing them to make sure we deliver on our goal of being a best-in-class arcade shooter. We will share more information about Preseason and testing as it comes.

Thanks again for your support – we’re working hard to make something really special and we couldn’t do it without you.

– XDefiant Development Team

An update on XDefiant- pic.twitter.com/3orSnspmp6

— XDefiant (@PlayXDefiant) October 9, 2023

XDefiant’s Executive Producer Mark Rubin, also shared a longer statement about the game’s release delay.

Hello All!

We just had a quick test of our PTS (Public Test Session) server infrastructure and I want to thank everyone who took part in the test! These servers will be used when we are live to test and get feedback of new content coming to the game. So, you may see new factions, new weapons, new modes, etc. We will adapt as needed to make sure the game is as aligned with player expectations.

And thank you so much to everyone who filled out the survey and provided feedback on our various social media platforms. From this feedback, we saw that the majority of people had a great time and saw an improvement over previous tests, BUT…that wasn’t the case for everyone.

And so, we’ve spent the last week digging through the data that we collected and have identified some things that brought us to the decision to take some extra time to fix or improve the experience for everyone.

I also want to point out that all feedback is not only extremely welcome but crucial to our goal of making a great game. We really do listen to everyone’s feedback no matter who you are and I hope that comes across even if the team and I can’t respond to everyone all the time. A great example of feedback from the PTS test was around movement feeling off. In particular that slide felt nerfed or clunkier. Nothing had changed in that part of the game but because people brought it up to us we were able to dig deeper and find that the slide was being interrupted by frame spikes. So again this might not have been something we’d ever see through normal testing so thank you again for the great feedback.

I know it’s a bummer that we are moving the date especially since we seemed so close and that for many the game is great and they can’t wait to play but I’d rather ship a game that is better for everyone. Our intent for this game is to be something that players can return to for many years and to do that we have to build this game WITH the community.

So, keep an eye out for future updates and info on the game and its launch. Thank you all again!!!

Sadly, there’s no word whether this delay means we’ll see the game sometime in November, or of it will miss 2023 entirely.

While we’ve enjoyed what we’ve played of XDefiant, I’d rather have a good game than a rushed one. This also potentially steers XDefiant off Modern Warfare 3’s gargantuan shadow as well, which no shooter franchise wants to tangle with.

Here’s to hoping we get another XDefiant beta test soon given the release delay.