Id Software announced that Doom Eternal, their highly anticipated sequel to Doom, will be delayed. The developer posted an official statement on twitter that Doom Eternal’s release date will be moved from Nov 26, 2019 to March 20, 2020. 

“Throughout the development of Doom Eternal, our goal has been to deliver a game that exceeds your greatest expectations across the board,” the statement reads. “To make sure we’re delivering the best experience—for Doom Eternal to live up to our standards of speed and polish—we’ve made the decision to extend our launch date by a few months to March 20, 2020. We know many fans will be disappointed by this delay, but we are confident that Doom Eternal will deliver a gaming experience that is worth the wait.”

The announcement received little backlash on Twitter due to the overwhelming success of Doom, the previous entry in the rebooted series which released in 2016. It can be reasonably inferred that is Doom Eternal was delayed due to optimization reasons. The gameplay footage shows that it will be pushing the limit of the Playstation 4, Xbox One and Google Stadia, and after the delay the release of the Nintendo Switch port of the game lost it’s release date and will be releasing sometime after the game releases on PS4, Xbox One, PC and Google Stadia, probably due to id Software needing to optimize the game to run on the lackluster Nintendo Switch hardware.

Doom Eternal is removing both the deathmatch multiplayer game mode, and the “Snapmap” game mode, which let players create and publish their own detailed custom maps. “Battle Mode” Doom Eternal’s new 1 v 2  multiplayer mode was also delayed to release sometime after the launch date.

Finally, Doom 64, a bonus for pre ordering Doom Eternal has also had its release date changed to be on the 2020 launch date for Doom Eternal. It is the first time the N64 game has been put on another console, and the new March release date is nine days before the game’s twelfth anniversary.