Last year, the crowdfunded title Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night was delayed into 2018 due to an internal shakeup, causing the game's original developers to move away from the project. As we near the end of 2018, not only has the Castlevania-inspired title been delayed once again into 2019, but its then-promised PlayStation Vita version has now been scrapped in lieu of the lacking support for the handheld.

Originally crowdfunded back in May 2015 when the former lead of Castlevania Koji Igarshi left Konami to pursue game development on an independent level, Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night's stretch goals at the time for the studio included ports for the game to both the Wii U and PlayStation Vita. Just last year, the team decided to surrender the attempt for a WiiU launch in return for bringing the game over to Nintendo's newest console, the Switch.

Currently, Bloodstained has just under 65,000 backers, with over $5 million dollars funded towards the project. The studio originally had a funding goal of just $500,000, with stretch goals for the Wii U and Vita ports sitting at three and three and a half million dollars, respectively. In the delay update posting from Igarshi, backers who ordered the Vita version of the game have the option to either switch their pre-order to a different system of their choosing or request a refund.

bloodstained nintendo switch

The absence of the Vita version for BloodStained is another blow to the die-hard Vita fanbase, who have seen the proprietary handheld receive less and less first-party support, and with indie developers shifting production in the past couple years over to the Switch. In fact, there will soon be even less reason to play or look for new games on the Vita, as Sony is discontinuing the manufacturing of physical Vita cartridges in the first half of 2019.

If there's no enough evidence developers are trying to get away from the Vita, PlayStation also announced its monthly free PS Plus games will only include titles on PlayStation 4, thus ending support for both PS3 and Vita. Taking all of this into consideration, there's no doubt that not only will Vita players will be disappointed to learn that Bloodstained won't be coming to the platform, but also fans of the forthcoming title as a whole have to wait even longer for its launch.

BloodStained: Ritual of The Night will now release in 2019 for Nintendo Switch, PC, PlayStation 4, and Xbox One.

Source: Kickstarter