Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora delayed to next year—and maybe longer
Ubisoft has announced a delay for Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora, the open-world game based in James Cameron’s sci-fi universe. Originally slated to launch by the end of the year, Frontiers of Pandora will now arrive sometime between April 2023 and March 2024, per the publisher’s latest financial briefing [PDF link].
The delay wasn’t entirely shocking given the lack of news about the game. The last time we saw Frontiers of Pandora was June 2021, and we still don’t know very much about how it’ll play. We do know it’s first-person, and it runs on an upgraded version of The Division 2‘s Snowdrop Engine, with developer Massive Entertainment touting big visual and AI improvements.
Still, there’s one reason the delay does come as a surprise: cross-promotion. Or, more accurately, the missed opportunity for cross-promotion.
Back in November 2020, Ubisoft actually announced it was pushing Frontiers of Pandora back into 2022 to make sure it didn’t launch too early. The publisher said it wanted the game out around the release of the second movie in the series, Avatar: The Way of Water, which had suffered some delays of its own. Well, the movie is finally coming out on December 16th, and the game won’t be out until four months later, at the soonest.
If The Way of Water is as big of a hit as the original Avatar (which stayed in theaters for a ridiculous 34 weeks) that may not wind up being a huge issue. But if the sequel doesn’t have the same staying power—or if it flops outright—things may get awkward for Ubisoft.
Whenever it launches, Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora will come to PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S, and Windows PC.
