Following the announcement that the Crackdown 3 release date has once again been pushed back, the new 2018 date has raised a few questionsquestions from the community about “how soon is too soon.”. In a recent interview, Microsoft Studios Publishing general manager Shannon Loftis took this concerns and faced them head on.

“I think we probably announced Crackdown too early,” said Loftis. The initial reveal came four long years prior to the new release date, that’s a lot of time to be waiting on updates. As to why such a long stretch between the announcement and launch date, Loftis did talk a little about about how there are currentlydifferent studios working on the various mechanical aspects, including the three distinct game modes.

We definitely underestimated the challenge of making sure the quality bar of all three of those modes was high and it delivers on what we need to deliver on. So we had to take the extra time, [and] make sure that we’re delivering the game the Crackdown fans want. It was a super hard decision to do that, and it was made harder because we announced the game.”

Crackdown 3 was initially meant for a 2016 release date, and though we have yet to see the title’s launch; there is a silver lining to this “mistake”. Loftis expressed that the team recognizes the missteps and will carry the lesson learned into future title announcements. She also casually dropped a hint about current projects, but was very clear that they are not announcing anything until it was time.

We’re trying to learn from that mistake and do better, so we have a bit that’s in development now that we’re not talking about. We’re in this for the long haul, and we wanna make sure that not just in the spring of 2018, but in the summer, and in the fall, and the spring of 2019 that we’ll have great, unique, fun experiences for Xbox gamers.”

The upcoming title promises to be worth the wait. From Terry Crews’ character confirmed for the third installment, to the gameplay seen so far, the next phase for this series could potentially be a title worth waiting for. Crackdown 3 is set to release for the Xbox One and PC in the Spring of 2018.