Say it ain't So.... The Inpatient and Bravo Team both delayed till 2018

PlayStation VR owners woke up Friday morning to some very unfortunate news. PlayStation Europe tweeted out that Supermassive's two huge PSVR releases would both see delays into early 2018:

"The release dates for #PlayStationVR titles The Inpatient and Bravo Team have moved.

The inpatient will now launch on 24th Jan and Bravo Team will launch on 7th March.

The delay is to give the development teams extra time to make the games as enjoyable for players as possible."

It's certainly unfortunate that these two games have been delayed, but it's not as incredibly shocking as it may first appear. The Inpatient was originally scheduled for a November 22nd release, which comes just five days after the release of Skyrim VR. To say that Skyrim VR's upcoming release is overshadowing every other PSVR game would be a major understatement. Anyone that has visited the PSVR subreddit recently knows that it's "all Skyrim, all the time". The hype and anticipation for Skyrim VR is absolutely off the charts, but one side effect of this is that a huge game like The Inpatient wasn't getting anywhere near the amount of publicity it probably deserves. Although I have no inside information to the real reason for the delay, it wouldn't shock me in the least if this move was more marketing based than anything else. A January 24th release gets The Inpatient out of Skyrim's spotlight, and allows the game a better chance to breathe.

As for Bravo Team, again no inside information, but I always found it a bit peculiar that Supermassive would have two separate games coming out within a couple weeks of each other. Bravo Team's original release date was December 6th, only 14 days removed from their other huge PSVR release. Of course, the two games are in radically different genres, and it's not as if they're in danger of cannibalizing each other's sales, but it still seemed a bit strange. The new release date of March 7th is a bit farther off into the future, would could suggest that some actual work is being done to polish the game up, and smooth out the experience.

Ultimately, PSVR players have every right to be a bit disappointed with today's developments, but at the same time, this just gives all these games a better chance to have their own moments in the sun. Both DOOM VFR and Skyrim VR will dominate the PlayStation VR headlines over the next month or so, so this could be a blessing in disguise for Supermassive Games and Sony.