Press coverage about Update#61 and lastest info (03/26/2018)

Yeah, the communication could have been better. During the SXSW panel Mana finished it with saying the next update will talk about release date, and when clarified by Angel afterwards that it would actually be the update at the end of March, an opportunity was missed to clarify that it's just talking about release without giving a release date. I can see how game news outlets could be confused, and it's going to create quite a problem, because I can forsee the next batch of articles being very negative talking about a lack of a clear release. What's worse is that when the release date is actually announced, if it isn't within a quarter it will multiply the negativity. If delays and a long development time are what's makes "another MN9" Bloodstained will certainly be labeled as such. Which is insulting, because the quality of the game is obviously much better than MN9, we don't have issues on our forums, with our staff, etc. It's just taking a long time to get this game done right.

I believe the next game slice will be well loved and will strike up a lot of coverage, and I hope by then those articles showing positive notes about the slice will have a solid release date to tack on those articles so they don't end with an ambitious statement for release.

I don't see the value in hyping up "talking about release" at the end of SXSW. That's what happened though, even if unintended. I suspect the intent was to have an answer to the the most frequent question "when will the game release" and instead of something neutral like "there is no confirmed date, but follow our Kickstarter updates" or something like that, it came out as "we will talk about a release DATE in our next update". Big difference, and I can see how difficult it is to properly navigate such things when on stage.

Of course, all of this is just my opinion and speculation. The wording may have been chosen very carefully for reasons that only make sense in the big picture. 505 has only been amazing for Bloodstained so far, and it's their responsibility to handle this stuff. So let's see how well they can do with public relations on the subject of release. I don't care to see them blame game news outlets on misunderstanding the release comment "just to get clicks" as I don't think that happened here.

Yeah. Well, I suppose we can't blame the news folks, as you say, they're as excited about the demo as everyone else. People really reeeeeally wanna see it