The Medium captured our attention with its dual-reality presentation, in which players can simultaneously navigate the real world and its spirit-world counterpart. The fact that it’s a console exclusive on Xbox Series X/S and not a generation-straddling game like many launch-window titles only added to the anticipation. While it was originally set for a December 10 release, developer Bloober Team has announced that it’s getting pushed back a month into early next year.
The Medium will now be arriving on Xbox Series X/S and PC on January 28, 2021. While the delay is disappointing, it’s hard to argue with the reasons behind the decision. Lead game designer Wojciech Piejko issued the following statement:
“After much careful thought and consideration, today we have made the difficult decision to delay the launch of The Medium to January 28, 2021. As the COVID-19 pandemic continues to affect development challenges across our industry, we at Bloober Team are committed to the overall safety, health, and well-being of our development team. By making the tough decision to delay our launch, Bloober Team remains committed to delivering our biggest, most ambitious, immersive, fear-inducing experience to date. The additional development time will allow us to further polish and add elements that will ensure we deliver our innovative, genre-pushing vision of interactive psychological horror. We apologize for the delay and would like to thank our fans and community for their continued and unwavering support. Rest assured, the delay will not stop us from sharing information with you, and you can expect us to unravel a few more layers of The Medium’s great mystery soon. Stay tuned and stay safe.”
The delay also gets the game away from the blast radius of one of the year’s most anticipated titles, too. Fellow Polish developer CD Projekt RED recently delayed Cyberpunk 2077 from a planned November 19 release to December 10. While Bloober Team doesn’t call that newly packed date out in its statement, it’s difficult to imagine that it wasn’t at least a contributing factor in the decision.