It seems to be a hectic time over at Amazon Game Studios. Just a few short weeks after moving Crucible, the company's new hero-based shooter, from a full release to a closed beta, Amazon today announced that it is now again pushing the MMO New World from its planned August launch all the way into next year.New World's Studio Director, Rich Lawrence, made the announcement today over on the game's official website citing that the team seemingly wants to add more content to the MMO before fully releasing it. "As a result, we will be changing our launch date - and correspondingly, our final beta test - to spring 2021," Lawrence explained. "We don't make the decision lightly, and we have urgency about getting the game to you as quickly as possible at the best quality -- with some additions that will make the experience even better."This is the second such time that New World has been delayed in 2020. Originally, the title was slated to arrive in May before being bumped back to August. At the time, Amazon Game Studios explained that difficulty in development that arose in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic was one of the reasons for this move, which was understandable.

Even though it won't see a full release next month like it was planned, Lawrence did still say that some players will be able to still jump into New World on August 25. "As a thank you to our community, we will be providing a special opportunity for our Beta sign-up and pre-order customers (plus our Alpha testers, thank you!) to play the full game of New World - in its current state, for a limited period of time starting on August 25th," it was said. The length of this new trial period for the game wasn't given, however.

It's definitely a bad look to delay a game so close to launch in this manner, but given how poorly Crucible did when it released back in May, perhaps Amazon is now really trying to ensure that New World can be a hit out of the gate. More time to work on games is typically always a positive, but at this point, this move seems to indicate that larger issues could be transpiring over at Amazon Game Studios as a whole. Despite having been established all the way back in 2012, Amazon has only to date released two games across consoles and PC; and one of those was only a month later essentially de-released.

We'll keep our fingers crossed that New World turns out to be an MMO experience that many will love once it arrives, but it's hard to not be a bit concerned at this point in time.