XDefiant Indefinitely Delayed As It Fails To Pass Sony/Microsoft Certification

Ubisoft’s Mark Rubin has confirmed that their upcoming Call of Duty-inspired online FPS XDefiant won’t be getting a release date anytime soon. This is due to the fact that the game has failed to pass Sony and Microsoft’s certification. The information was posted on a very transparent blog post discussing the submission process and the expected scenarios. 

Rubin first goes into detail talking about how the submission process works. Essentially, after weeks of testing by the QA team, the final build of the game is sent to first-party publishers (in this case those are Microsoft and Sony) in order to be certified for release. If it passes then the game could be shipped fairly soon, if not then further work and testing is needed before the game is in an acceptable state. 

Rubin further specifies that first-party publishers are less concerned about technical bugs and more concerned about compliance bugs. Rubin describes compliance bugs as follows: 

Compliance bugs are ones that relate to the systems and overall experience that the first parties expect from games on their platform. (e.g., Are trophies being properly tracked, is my friend’s list being properly updated with game status, etc.)”

Rubin confirmed that both Sony and Microsoft didn’t pass XDefiant for certification, further adding that if they had, the game could have launched at the end of August. If the game gets passed for certification this time, however, then we can likely expect a mid-end September release.

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They also add that XDefiant could also end up with a conditional pass, which would require a Day 1 patch for the game, in which case we would have to expect a launch around early-mid September. 

We are currently in the CM prep part of that process and will hopefully be submitting to 1st parties in a little less than 2 weeks. If that Passes cleanly, then we could be looking at a mid-to-end of September release. There is however a likely scenario where we get a conditional Pass meaning we have to do a Day 1 patch with some final fixes to ensure compliance. If we do need to do a Day 1 patch, then that pushes our date out to early/mid-October.”

XDefiant also had a beta period earlier this year with many players giving the game a go. I was one of those players and while I certainly had a good time with it and it’s rich with unique and interesting ideas, the game was in clear need of more polish. With that in mind though, if the issues are ironed out by launch then X Defiant could potentially become Ubisoft’s second major success in the online FPS market after Rainbow Six Siege.