Prison Architect 2 has been delayed for a second time, ditching the previous launch date of 7th May until 3rd September, aiming to improve performance on lower-end PCs in particular. Prison Architect 2 is coming to PS5, Xbox Series X|S and PC.
Explaining the issues they encountered, the Prison Architect 2 team at Double Eleven said:
While we currently have builds certified on all platforms and are ready to release, some issues regarding memory usage and minimum spec configurations experiencing more failures have emerged. Considering the legacy of Prison Architect, and you – our passionate community, we want to ship the best possible sequel to such a beloved game, without cutting corners to do so.
With the release date getting closer, we carried out further testing on the final build using multiple configurations to verify its stability. These tests result in a MBTF (mean time between failure) report, the method used to get this result is playing the game until a failure arises. A failure can mean a variety of things, for example, a crash, freeze, or other play-halting issues. In this report, we noticed that on specific configurations the game was not hitting our MTBF target, with this being particularly true for minimum specs configurations.
Once the issues were identified, we started working on improving Prison Architect 2’s memory usage to mitigate the situation. Overall, the work has been successful, and we have reached a satisfactory level of performance on lower specs. Unfortunately, with such a rework some new technical challenges emerged, as the number of crashes increased noticeably.
With this tricky technical issue to untangle, Double Eleven and Paradox Interactive have chosen to delay the game until much later in the year. It certainly seems that the negativity and community pushback from the Cities: Skylines 2 release has been deeply felt at Paradox, and so they are wary of repeating the same mistakes with another game.
Prison Architect 2 will step into the third dimension with everything that this entails. You can now build a prison across multiple floors with more elaborate structures, and with building tools designed to accommodate this feat. Within that space, you’ve then got myriad management tools to define daily schedules for inmates, policies for how to handle them, and more.
Prisoners now have more smarts, with the ability to form actual relationships with other people, and make decisions based on their wants and needs. This can lead to escape attempts, gang wars and more. You’ll have to try and accommodate this to ensure the smooth running of your penitentiary, whether that’s strict rules or a more lenient approach that puts inmate rehabilitation first.
The original Prison Architect was a massive success for original developer Introversion Software, with its fun take on the management sim genre and distinctive stylised 2D graphics. The franchise was acquired by Paradox Interactive in 2019 and entrusted to Double Eleven, who supported the game with several content packs, through to a final update in May last year.
Source: press release, Paradox Interactive
