Squadron 42 releasing this coming year

[Shadow Reaper]

https://www.ign.com/articles/star-citizen-dev-says-squadron-42-is-now-fully-playable-is-over-40-hours-in-length-and-is-still-on-track-for-2026-release-date

 

[Aramsolari]

Well I've been disappointed in the past so if they actually hold true to their release date, I'll be pleasantly surprised.

They better not release in November though. That's when GTA VI comes out.

 

[Richard Bong]

I seriously doubt it, for several reasons, like we've been told this before. Most importantly, though:

• CIG has said they want to have at least 6 months of marketing to build hype before release. (From a marketing standpoint that is about right.)
• CIG has said they don't want to launch around the time GTA 6 launches.

So to launch in Spring, the Marketing blitz should have already started.
GTA6 is launching in October so sometime March through May GTA 6 is going to start their marketing blitz.

Before anyone says "But GTA 6 is an entirely different genre so not really a competitor." Yes, that is true, however GTA 6 is going to soak up all the limited Marketing bandwidth starting around Early April, late March. Launching a game when everyone is looking at something else and your marketing gets swallowed up and/or ignored, means the only people that will know about the launch are people that have already bought the game. You can't have a successful launch if nobody knows you launched. Spring 2027, at the earliest. The more likely answer though is "two years."

 

[NaffNaffBobFace]

I seriously doubt it, for several reasons, like we've been told this before. Most importantly, though:

• CIG has said they want to have at least 6 months of marketing to build hype before release. (From a marketing standpoint that is about right.)
• CIG has said they don't want to launch around the time GTA 6 launches.

So to launch in Spring, the Marketing blitz should have already started.
GTA6 is launching in October so sometime March through May GTA 6 is going to start their marketing blitz.

Before anyone says "But GTA 6 is an entirely different genre so not really a competitor." Yes, that is true, however GTA 6 is going to soak up all the limited Marketing bandwidth starting around Early April, late March. Launching a game when everyone is looking at something else and your marketing gets swallowed up and/or ignored, means the only people that will know about the launch are people that have already bought the game. You can't have a successful launch if nobody knows you launched. Spring 2027, at the earliest. The more likely answer though is "two years."

Competing for those ads would be a good way to double the marketing spend for both companies while getting half the ads. The only winner there would be the advertisers.

 

[Lorddarthvik]

I seriously doubt it, for several reasons, like we've been told this before. Most importantly, though:

• CIG has said they want to have at least 6 months of marketing to build hype before release. (From a marketing standpoint that is about right.)
• CIG has said they don't want to launch around the time GTA 6 launches.

So to launch in Spring, the Marketing blitz should have already started.
GTA6 is launching in October so sometime March through May GTA 6 is going to start their marketing blitz.

Before anyone says "But GTA 6 is an entirely different genre so not really a competitor." Yes, that is true, however GTA 6 is going to soak up all the limited Marketing bandwidth starting around Early April, late March. Launching a game when everyone is looking at something else and your marketing gets swallowed up and/or ignored, means the only people that will know about the launch are people that have already bought the game. You can't have a successful launch if nobody knows you launched. Spring 2027, at the earliest. The more likely answer though is "two years."

Agreed. I don't think we are getting SQ42 in 2026. Possibly a closed beta/evocati? test near end of 26, then another 6 months minimum.
But as we know, CIG keeps saying things then not acting on it.

The only way I can see them launch before GTA 6 is if they changed their minds, and hoping to pull the same "shadow drop" that most of the actually good games did this past 1-2 years.
I'm leaning heavily on the side that CiG will not risk it like this, they will stick to a lengthy standard ad cycle, pushing it further into 27 or even 28.. Or they might just announce a week before that it drops on May 27th lol