New World, the highly anticipated MMO from Amazon Games, has been delayed following its rather successful beta.

The beta drew in 25 million hours of play and, following feedback from all that playtime, the game has been delayed. It was supposed to launch on 31st August after several other delays, with 28th September the newest date given for release.

These 25 million hours come from more than a million players and, while both those numbers are very much rounded off, that would mean that each player put serious time into their early adventures into New World. We know playing for a long time is typical of the MMO genre, but it’s impressive to see in a game that isn’t even properly released yet.

“Along the way, you’ve also given us a ton of feedback that we’ll use to make New World even better. We want New World’s launch to be a smooth and fun experience for all players, and that means making some improvements based on what you encountered during Closed Beta. So we’re going to take a few extra weeks to smash bugs, improve stability, and polish the game,” an announcement about the delay reads.

Said announcement also thanks players for sending New World to the top of the charts for one of the most watched games on Twitch and one of the most played games on Steam.

For the past two weeks pre-sales for New World has claimed first and second places in the top selling charts based on revenue on Steam. The advice to avoid pre-orders seemingly fell on deaf ears as the hype around the beta continued to grow.

It will be interesting to see if these strong pre-sales continue this week as player realise that they won’t be able to make use of their pre-orders for another few months.

“This was not an easy decision to make. We know this isn’t the first time we’ve changed our launch date in pursuit of quality, and that it can be disappointing to wait a bit longer. But we want to be sure we deliver you the highest quality game possible at launch. Thank you for your support and feedback. We’re listening. We’ll see you in Aeternum,” the delay announcement concludes.