Game studio PlayDead burst onto the scene with the highly praised indie game Limbo. Featuring an engrossing atmosphere, innovative puzzle/platformer gameplay, and a haunting art style, the game was critically acclaimed, and even headlined the Summer of Arcade on Xbox 360 five years ago.
PlayDead is continuing their relationship with Microsoft for their second project, Inside. The game retains the side-scrolling nature and general tone of Limbo, but goes off into new, interesting art style directions. Inside has been in development for years now, and fans of Limbo have been eagerly anticipating it, but unfortunately, they will have to wait a little longer.
PlayDead has announced that they've made the decision to delay Inside from its early 2015 release date to some point later in the year. After all, "early" 2015 has already come and gone, as we're practically halfway to 2016 at this point. When exactly Inside will be available now is uncertain, but it may be sooner rather than later.
According to a representative from the studio, "After 5 years in development, we, more than anyone, are looking forward to the release. We are so close, but getting it right has taken a little more time than we anticipated."
So it seems that development is winding down, and they are holding the game back to add a little more polish. Limbo fans may be a bit disappointed at this news, but surely they would rather the game be delayed to receive the extra polish needed to ensure it can live up to the hype.
Judging by the language of the PlayDead representative, it still seems as though Inside will be coming by the end of the year, though there is no current release date or window. It is possible that a concrete release date for Inside could come as soon as E3, however.
The game was initially unveiled during Microsoft's E3 press conference last year with a debut trailer. Considering it is a fairly significant indie exclusive for Xbox One, an area where the system is lacking compared to the PS4, Microsoft will likely feature the game during their press conference. Fans of Limbo excited to see more of Inside should definitely tune in to Microsoft's E3 press conference on June 15th, just in case MS decides to showcase the game.
Initially, the Xbox One was not very friendly towards indie games such as Inside. However, in response to backlash both from developers as well as fans, Microsoft has loosened the restrictions of the Xbox One's parity clause. Furthermore, they've been actively seeking out indie titles to feature on Xbox as a part of their ID@Xbox program, which is likely how Inside came to be an Xbox One exclusive to begin with.
Inside is now due for release at some point later in 2015, exclusively for Xbox One.
Source: GameSpot