Uncharted 4 Delayed into April 2016

PS4-exclusive Uncharted 4: A Thief's End has been delayed by five weeks and will now launch on April 26, 2016 in North America, and April 27, 2016 in the UK and Europe. The game was previously scheduled to launch worldwide on March 18, 2016.

Posting on the PlayStation Blog directors Neil Druckmann and Bruce Straley explained that developer Naughty Dog needed "a bit more time to finish the game so that it meets our standards and vision."

He continued: "This is our largest Uncharted, and the team has been working incredibly hard to meet the challenge of closing out the game’s development in a timely manner. However, as we started to approach our final deadlines and started wrapping up the game’s levels, we realised that several key sequences needed extra resources to bring them to the finish line.

"After carefully considering all of our options, we decided to extend our schedule, making sure that we get a few more polish passes before submitting our gold master (the final disc for manufacturing)."

They continued to say the extra time would allow Naughty Dog to make sure the game gets "a few more polish passes" before the final game is submitted for disc manufacturing.

"Pushing the date is not an easy choice, and we wouldn't do it if we didn’t feel in our hearts it's the best course of action for the game. To you, our loyal fans, we hope you'll accept our sincere apology. We know many of you have been waiting patiently for Nathan Drake’s final chapter, and now we humbly ask you to wait a bit longer."

Sony has detailed two physical, limited edition versions of Uncharted 4: the special edition ($80) and Libertalia collector's edition ($120). You can see the contents of these here.