ArcSys is striving to ensure the best quality on this one.
In a tweet posted on February 8, Arc System Works confirmed that the next DLC character and stage for Guilty Gear Strive have been delayed. Originally slated to be released in March, the company has now confirmed that the add-ons won’t release until April.
Season 2 of Guilty Gear Strive’s DLC began in August 2022, with the release of Bridget and an additional color pack. Sin Kiske was then added in November. The next character, plus an additional stage, were previously intended to be released this March, the same month as the finals Arc World Tour 2022 event. However, that release has now been pushed back.
In the tweet, Arc System Works confirmed that Additional Character #8 and Additional Stage #3 were being delayed by a month “in order to provide the best quality possible.” No specific issues beyond quality control were highlighted, with the identity of the new character still being kept under wraps. It is possible that the character will still be revealed at the Arc World Tour event in March, ahead of their later release.
It’s not like Arc System Works hasn’t been busy with other updates to Guilty Gear Strive. In between the content roadmap of characters and other DLC, the game had cross-platform play between PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, and PC added last December. It was also announced that the game would become available for the Xbox Series X|S in spring of 2023, with an open beta test for cross-play with those platforms held earlier this month, from February 3-6. The exact release date for the Xbox version of Guilty Gear Strive has yet to be confirmed, though that specification of spring means it might now coincide with the April release of the next DLC character. On top of all that, Arc System Works has also spent time going back and adding rollback netcode to its older fighting game titles, including Guilty Gear Strive’s predecessor, Guilty Gear Xrd Rev 2.
With all this in mind, waiting an extra month for quality control on Guilty Gear Strive’s new character doesn’t seem like much, in the grand scheme of things. There is the question of how this delay will affect the rest of the roadmap. The fourth and final DLC character of Season 2, along with another new stage, were previously set to be released this May. With the third character bumped forward by a month, it will remain to be seen if the next one makes it out on time, or sees a similar delay.
