Earlier this week, Ubisoft announced that it had chosen to delay Far Cry 6 and Rainbow Six Quarantine, two major titles that it still has planned to release either in 2021 or early 2022, due to production troubles brought on by the ongoing coronavirus pandemic. But one other game that not many may know about was also hit with a delay - Ubisoft's new Avatar game.
To clarify, this is not a tie-in with either the beloved Avatar: The Last Airbender or Legend of Korra animated shows, but James Cameron's Avatar, which first debuted in cinemas in 2009 and became the highest-grossing movie of all time, a record it held until 2019's Avengers: Endgame.
More specifically, the game is meant to tie-in with the upcoming sequel, Avatar 2. Said sequel was supposed to release in December 2021, 12 years after the first one, but also had to be delayed. With it being pushed to a 2022 release, Ubisoft has opted to delay development on the game as well. The new plan is to release it in Ubisoft's financial year that begins in April 2022.
This obviously makes sense as releasing an Avatar game closer to the sequel's release will better promote the movie and vice-versa, thus improving potential sales, compared to if it chose to release the game in 2021, a year before the movie comes out. Even so, it's entirely possible that the new game won't be a simple adaptation of the movie's events, as the first game Ubisoft released in 2009 acted as a prequel and gave players the option to side with the native Na'vi people and become an Avatar or continue working as an RDA soldier.
Though this new Avatar game was announced back in 2017, Ubisoft has revealed next to nothing about it, with the only piece of confirmed info being that Massive Entertainment, the studio responsible for the two The Division games, is working on it.
As for what platforms it will be available on, given the release window, it's probably safe to assume that it will launch on next gen hardware, the PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X/S, as well as PC.
In the meantime, Ubisoft has plenty of other games to keep players occupied. Watch Dogs: Legion released very recently to mostly strong reviews and Assassin's Creed Valhalla is set to launch very soon alongside the next gen consoles.
As for Avatar, Cameron still intends to make three other sequels. In fact, Cameron has stated that production on Avatar 3 is near completion, with the plan being to release that movie in 2024.
Source: GameSpot