Amplitude delayed until later this year, but for good reason

Harmonix has announced that their Kickstarted reboot of Amplitude will be delayed until later this year. The reason for the delay, however, isn't so bad.

According to chief creative officer Alex Rigopulos, the developer has decided to "double down, increase the project budget, and make the new Amplitude bigger and better."

Instead of launching with 16 track as originally planned, Amplitude will now release with 30 (plus an additional song for backers). More modes are also being added, and Amplitude will now ship with a solo campaign, solo free play, a two- to four-player free for all, and an all-new team play mode for 1v3 and 2v2. Two more playable environments are also being added.

including "a concept album wrapper to the otherwise vanilla solo mode," which should add more depth and interest to the game and songs. The core campaign will now include 16 original songs written by Harmonix's musicians. Additionally, two more playable environments, as well as "a concept album wrapper to the otherwise vanilla solo mode."

Leaderboards will also allow players to compete asynchronously against each other online for score, both per-song and across the entire game. And lastly, there's a "new way to play the game that will change the way you think about Amplitude's 6-lane track" that still has yet to be announced.

Unfortunatley, this new ambition means a delay. Originally due out this summer, Amplitude will now be released for PS4 later this year for backers (with a PS3 version coming "shortly thereafter").

"Kickstarter backers who paid for the “early access” reward will be able to play the PS4 version in December, prior to the holiday break. For everyone else, the PS4 version will become available in January. (We’ll follow up with the exact dates in December and January for PS4 as soon as we have them. PS3 will follow shortly behind.)

"We know that this schedule slip will be a disappointment to many of you. (Frankly, it’s disappointing to us as well, as we’re all dying to play the finished game…) However, our judgment was that our highest priority is to deliver the best game we possibly can to our fans—the definitive version of Amplitude," wrote Rigopulos. "We want to over-deliver for our biggest supporters, and that’s simply going to require some extra time."