Release Date Speculation #61

[Alblaka]

After reading the #61 Dev Diary thread, I've come to a realization that we can use Dev Diaries to grossly estimate the release date of Utopia!

In the thread, it's explicitely stated

• that the next Dev Diary will cover Governments and Civics
• Wiz confirmed there will be two more Dev Diarys covering Synthetic and Bioengineering Ascension paths

Therefore, we can conclude that it is impossible for Utopia to be released within the next 3 weeks.
Furthermore, we can guesstimate that there may be more dev diaries past those three. We further know that it could be possible that Paradox does not release Utopia AND provide a dev diary, making it more likely that whatever release date is +-1 week after the last dev diary published.
Then again, it's possible that dev diarys will be released after release to cover 'stuff we couldn't explain before, but want to reason now'.
Adding in the possibility of skipping a week of dev diary for holiday/illness/finalizing reasons...

My new estimate is that the earliest possible release date is 6 weeks from now.

Discuss & wishful Thinking!


PS: Obviously any thread discussing release dates is to be taken in good humour.

 

[henzington]

The dlc on the date stated in the stream the only question is which stream.

 

[Milten]

Judging by the fact that Wiz is ready to tell about last major feature next week, core of Utopia is mostly done. Whispers in the Void tell me that it will take about a month to balance and bugfix, so I'd bet on the end of March / beginning of April.

 

[D Inqu]

Easter is mid-April, so I would put Good Friday as the latest possible time it could be released by. Most likely at least a week before, so that they can roll a hotfix or two out to fix whatever bugs appear with the update.

 

[rittstar]

after the last stream, WIZ make a Q&A session, where he stated that "we´re not quite done with factions"

so i dont believe they are close to a potential release date, furthermore there will be a paradox convention 13-14th of May, i expect the announcement of the release date by then

seems reasonable time, 12 weeks to complete and balancing, after announcement of release date maybe in june, still 4 weeks for bug hunting

i hope i am wrong though

 

[PawnTheS]

after the last stream, WIZ make a Q&A session, where he stated that "we´re not quite done with factions"

so i dont believe they are close to a potential release date, furthermore there will be a paradox convention 13-14th of May, i expect the announcement of the release date by then

seems reasonable time, 12 weeks to complete and balancing, after announcement of release date maybe in june, still 4 weeks for bug hunting

i hope i am wrong though

You just ruined my day

 

[Darustet]

Since even they can't give an estimate on release date, we can say that it's not going to be before the end of March, no matter how many or few DDs we can predict. They might just stop releasing DD's if they don't have anything more to talk about like before 1.4. But you can add music DD to the list if people want to count those.

Yet I see no reason why Utopia wouldn't come before June. That is three and a half months away. Even if it takes a whole month to fix factions, it propably won't take two additional months to fix bugs and balance things, since that is something they are doing alongside everything else. I don't see what Paradox convention would have to do with this, but it would be good to have the patch and the DLC to come out before that, so that they can sell the DLC to anyone who is attending/watching, maybe have a sale, which is always better than just having the release date or pre-order available.

 

[Bayes]

Im guessing late march early april. Could be later, but considering this is the first major expansion for stellaris and stellaris was released like 8 months ago AND they are running out of major features to DD, Im thinking its more likely not to be atleast that much later.

It seems to be working despite some buggs here and there and to our knowledge most of the features are playable. I think 12 weeks is abit unreasonable.

EDIT: Rights of man wich is considered a pretty big expansion was announced 2 months prior to release for example.

EDIT2: I decided to find some more examples.

Recent CK2 DLC:

Reapers Due: It was announced on 2016-07-21. It was released on 2016-08-25.
Conclave: It was announced on 2016-01-07. It was released on 2016-02-02.
Horse Lords: It was announced on 2015-06-02. It was released on 2015-07-14.

Recent EU4 DLC:

Rights of man: It was announced on 2016-08-19. It was released on 2016-10-11.
Mare Nostrum: It was announced on March 1st 2016. It was released on April 5th, 2016.
The Cossacks: It was announced on 2015-10-15. It was released on 2015-12-01.

All the dates are from the wiki.

 

[Princess Stabbity]

The fact that they're confident enough in the hot code to stream it indicates that it's in a nominally playable state. At this point the project is most likely feature-locked, but obviously implementation is still underway. A lot of things (such as civics only being added before the last stream, missing art assets, names and numbers still in flux and so on) aren't finalised in the playable (or rather streamable) build so I wouldn't hope for a release date until everything they had planned to include is included and they're at the final testing stage (at which point publishing takes over, decides on the release date and stands over the QA team with whips in hand).

So what I'm saying is, without knowing how many unannounced features they still have in store we can't even begin to guess at the announcement of the release date, let alone the release date XD

But if Utopia releases late March or early April, I'll cry. There's not enough caffeine in the world for both Andromeda and Stellaris ._.

 

[Ixal]

Pure gut feeling 2-3 weeks after pdxcon

 

[GC13]

I'm still thinking some time around the end of March. There's absolutely no way they drag it out for four months though, so we'll have not just 1.5 but some fix patches for it by the time Paradoxcon rolls around in May.

 

[Bayes]

For the last three dlc for CK2 and EU4 the avreage amount of days between announcement and release has been 43.5 days.

The longest has been rights of man at 53 days.

Utopia was announced 2nd of febuary. Unless utopia is a huge outlier we should expect it somewhere inbetween 17/18 th of march(avreage) and the 1st of april.

Get hyped!

 

[Stromlord]

I think we must wait a bit longer. I hope for anytime in April.

 

[StJimmyRocks92]

I'd put it in the first week of April.

 

[Avian Overlord]

Judging by the fact that Wiz is ready to tell about last major feature next week, core of Utopia is mostly done. Whispers in the Void tell me that it will take about a month to balance and bugfix, so I'd bet on the end of March / beginning of April.

Not the last major feature, the last major rework. They still might be adding new features. April does sound right.

 

[Milten]

Not the last major feature, the last major rework. They still might be adding new features. April does sound right.

Civics are listed as a feature on Utopia's page https://www.paradoxplaza.com/stellaris-utopia

 

[LizardCommander]

Late March or early April is the most likely release date window, though it could be pushed back a little bit further into April if the bugs are difficult to hunt down and locate. Due to the possibility that unplanned team absences, game breaking bugs, or features that are taking longer to be implemented than planned could delay the schedule, they won't be releasing a specific date until it is pretty close to finished. People will be significantly less bothered if the project does not have an announced release date, and is not released as soon as they had hoped, than they would if it had a 'set in stone' release date that was not met in time.