Guilty Gear Strive Pushed Back to Early 2021

The next entry in the Guilty Gear series is taking some extra time. Arc System Works confirmed today that rather than late 2020, Guilty Gear Strive's release window is moving to early 2021.

The news comes from a Twitter post from Producer Takeshi Yamanaka earlier today. Elaborating on the delay, Yamanaka cites both the impact of the ongoing COVID-19 global health crisis and feedback from the recent closed beta test.

"While our company's staff and our business partners are putting in a sincere effort in dealing with the changes due to the spread of COVID-19, every aspect of our development schedule has faced delays," wrote Yamanaka. "In addition, we have decided to set up a schedule to further improve the quality of the game responding to everyone's help and feedback from the recent closed beta test."

Though Strive has evolved since its first, initially mixed reactions, there was still some trepidation about the new take on Guilty Gear during the recent closed beta test. Alongside plans to revamp its in-game interface and introduce rollback netcode, it sounds like Arc System Works will take some extra time to implement changes based on what players felt about Strive so far. "Please be assured that we will make good use of that extra time to do this," said Yamanaka.

Guilty Gear Strive is still presumably set for PlayStation 4 sometime early next year. For more on how Arc System Works is looking to change things up for the new Guilty Gear, check out our interview with Daisuke Ishiwatari, the chief creative officer of Strive.