Yh, this is why they can't push back to 26, been talking this up for the last few years. Can't skip a year when it's the biggest update/change to the series since the 2D engine was introduced. But they started hiring Unity devs in 2019!
That is probably a Sega thing. Their accounting year runs April to April. Not sure about SI's themselves, but I don't think they would force it out then of their own accord.
They've released in November since forever, it's not that on its own. It's more likely to be them not realising they should've started working on basically remaking the game from the ground up well before releasing 2024 if they were to promise it to be ready for 2025.
I know they started the hiring process and everything and some work is likely to have been started during the years, but they kept discussing features that can *possibly* be added up until a few months ago - the path should've been drawn from the start, or at least early on, not still getting drawn a few months from release. You're essentially making a new game, even if you know what the end product wants to be and how it should look like.
The most obvious balls up and what everyone feared would happen - happened. Hopefully this spurs on some competitors, but I highly doubt it.
