Square Enix Delays Kingdom Hearts ‘Dark Road’ App Release

(Bloomberg) -- The latest iteration in Square Enix Holdings Co.’s Kingdom Hearts “Dark Road” series has been delayed, according to the game’s official Twitter account.

The developers cited “current conditions” for the hold up and said they were trying to make it for the initial Spring release date. Another announcement has been planned for June.

Kingdom Hearts is a wildly popular series featuring a crossover world of Square Enix and Disney characters. The franchise follows the adventures of a group of friends as they travel through different worlds inspired by Disney films. The series has spawned countless games spanning consoles including Sony Corp’s PS4, the Nintendo 3DS and a smartphone app called Union X.

Dark Road will be a new game available in the existing Union X app, which features lucrative in-game microtransactions.

Despite consumers flocking to video games in the midst of the global Covid-19 lockdown, disruptions have caused delays to a pipeline of new games. Sony delayed the release of the highly anticipated “The Last of Us Part II” and Marvel’s “Iron Man VR” for PlayStation as the global crisis prevented the company from providing the “launch experience our players deserve,” according to a tweet from April 3.

The delay to the latest Kingdom Hearts series comes as Tokyo-based Square Enix reported a 61% drop in 4Q operating income, which was driven in part by weak repeat sales of titles released in the previous fiscal year and a writedown on the content production account.

The Twitter account for Dark Road first teased the app in January, describing it as an all new Kingdom Hearts experience planned for Spring 2020.

©2020 Bloomberg L.P.