Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League Never Made Sense to Release in 2022

WB Games and developer Rocksteady Studios announced this week that Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League would no longer be releasing in 2022 as it was previously intended. Instead, the game is now slated to drop in the spring window of 2023. This move wasn't a shocking one by any means, especially considering that we had already heard reports last month that Warner Bros. had internally decided to delay the project. However, more than anything, Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League never made much sense to release this year in the first place given how many other titles WB has in the pipeline. 

For the past few years, WB Games as a whole has had four massive games that fans have been looking forward to more than any others: Hogwarts Legacy, Gotham Knights, LEGO Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga, and Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League. Coming into this year, all four of these projects actually lined up to release over the course of 2022, which seemed like quite a lot, especially given that WB Games has had fewer titles releasing on an annual basis than normal. Since the start of 2019, the only "big" games that the publisher has released have included Mortal Kombat 11 and Back 4 Blood. 

With this in mind, it always seemed a bit staggering on paper that WB would release all of its most highly-anticipated games within one year. This is even more true given that we're already a quarter into 2022 and none of these aforementioned games have even been released yet (although The Skywalker Saga drops in early April). Plus, Gotham Knights and Hogwarts Legacy will both be arriving in the same window at the end of this year, which means that throwing Suicide Squad into this span of time would've led to WB essentially competing with itself. 

Essentially, all of this is to say that Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League always seemed best-served to get delayed into 2023 for a number of reasons. For starters, of all these upcoming WB games, Suicide Squad is the only one of the bunch that's going to release solely on next-gen hardware. Pushing it back only gives Warner Bros. more time to release the game when the install base for PS5 and Xbox Series X is even larger, which in theory, should lead to more sales. Not to mention, it also gives WB Games a title to actually release next year, which is something that it currently doesn't have. Outside of Monolith Software's upcoming Wonder Woman game (which doesn't have a launch window yet), WB hasn't given us a look at anything that will be arriving after 2022. 

Perhaps the only thing that doesn't look good about Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League getting delayed into 2023 though is that it makes the gap between Rocksteady projects even longer than average. Despite still being such a beloved studio, Rocksteady hasn't released a major game since 2015's Batman: Arkham Knight. And even when taking into account smaller releases, Batman: Arkham VR was the company's last release, and that came nearly six years ago in 2016. Even though video game development timelines are getting longer than ever before, to know that it will be nearly eight years between Rocksteady releases is surely a hard pill to swallow for both fans and those working at the studio. 

Although it's a bit upsetting that we won't get to play Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League this year, it seems like WB absolutely made the right call to punt its launch into early next year. Not only will its eventual release be better for WB as a publisher, but it should allow the game to breathe a bit more with some separation from Gotham Knights and Hogwarts Legacy. Hopefully, the long wait for Kill the Justice League will end up being worth it in the eyes of fans.