Banishers: Ghosts of New Eden Delayed to Avoid Other Big Game Releases

Don’t Nod and Focus Entertainment have announced that Banishers: Ghosts of New Eden has been delayed to Feb. 13, 2024. The game was originally supposed to launch on Nov. 7 this year.

Don’t Nod CEO Oskar Guilbert and Focus Entertainment managing director John Bert were upfront about their reason to delay the game, which was to avoid clashing with the heavy release schedule in the coming months.

“We have decided to postpone the release of this new franchise by three months, as the market is experiencing an intense release cycle for AAA titles on PC and consoles at the end of the year” they said in a joint statement. “We are convinced that a commercial release of Banishers: Ghosts of New Eden during a less saturated period will give it the attention it deserves.”

Banishers: Ghosts of New Eden isn’t the only game that was delayed out of the Fall 2023 season due to the same reason. Earlier this month, THQ Nordic announced that it was pushing the Alone in the Dark remake from its Oct. 25 release date to Jan. 16, 2024 in order to avoid releasing closely to games like Alan Wake 2 and Marvel’s Spider-Man 2.

While November 2023 doesn’t have as many big-name heavy hitters as October 2023 does, there are still noteworthy games coming out that month. These include Like a Dragon Gaiden, Persona 5 Tactica, Super Mario RPG remake, Tales of Arise: Beyond the Dawn DLC, and WarioWare: Move It!

Now that the game’s release date is in February 2024, however, it’ll have to compete with big releases such as Persona 3 Reload, Granblue Fantasy: Relink, Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League, Mario vs Donkey Kong, Final Fantasy VII Rebirth, and Helldivers 2. Banishers: Ghosts of New Eden will launch for PC, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series X|S.

George Yang is a freelance writer for IGN. He’s been writing about the industry since 2019 and has worked with other publications such as Insider, Kotaku, NPR, and Variety.

When not writing about video games, George is playing video games. What a surprise! You can follow him on Twitter @Yinyangfooey