Announced way back in 2014, Microsoft made a huge fuss over “Crackdown 3,” revealing the title only a few months after the release of Xbox One. However, the tech giant recently announced that the open world action-adventure role-playing game was to be delayed until Spring 2018. As expected, fans let out a collective sigh, and it seems like Microsoft’s Xbox's team did too, with one of its executives admitting that they kind of messed up.

Microsoft’s honest response to ‘Crackdown 3’ delays

Microsoft Studios Publishing's general manager Shannon Loftis talked to Polygon and expressed her opinion that the company may have made a mistake in announcing the “Crackdown 3” three years back. "We are trying to learn from that mistake and do better, so we have a bit that's in development now that we're not talking about,” Loftis said.

Meanwhile, corporate vice president of Xbox & Windows gaming platform, Mike Ybarra is pretty clear though: “The most important thing is giving game developers enough time to make a great game” he said. “I’ll take a delay of a game over rushing it and then having to fix it and patch it over time.” Despite the long delay, Microsoft says that Xbox One X pre-orders are doing very well.

All for a good reason

There’s been a general move away from announcing games early, as it leads to problems exactly like this. Sony has also said they’d rather keep quiet about upcoming games, following numerous postponed release dates and, of course, Nintendo has been doing it for years.

Following Loftis' statements, fans should expect Microsoft and the Xbox team to a bit more silent than they've ever been. Loftis did say that the development team is working on something right now, and while this might take a while to be revealed, a benefit is that there will be fewer disappointments in the future.

This also means fans would have to wait to see video game enthusiast and funny dude Terry Crews, who will star as one of the game's playable characters, Commander Jaxon.

The team has clearly put a lot of effort into the likeness because it's an absolute spitting image.

For anyone following the development of “Crackdown 3,” this news may sound like a broken record. Originally announced in 2014 with a planned 2016 launch, the game was pushed back to this year. No new specific release date has been given for the game so far. The Microsoft-exclusive will run at a 4K resolution on Xbox One X.