The highly anticipated Hogwarts Legacy has finally received an official release window to purge previous rumors of further delays.
During a new State of Play presentation earlier today, publisher Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment confirmed that Hogwarts Legacy will be releasing during the coming 2022 holiday season for all supported platforms.
The game was originally announced for current- and previous-generation PlayStation and Xbox consoles in addition to PC. Hogwarts Legacy will now also be simultaneously landing on the Nintendo Switch.
Hogwarts Legacy will be a single-player role-playing game without support for any microtransactions. Such has been confirmed by community manager Chandler Wood who took to Twitter to set the record straight after fans noticed that some of the potion brewing stations in the footage (above) had timers.
The concern being that developer Avalanche Software might be allowing players to purchase boosters with real-world currency to remove the timers—a common business model in mobile games. That is not the case with Hogwarts Legacy.
We’ve seen this question coming up and want to set the record straight.
There are no microtransactions in Hogwarts Legacy.
— Chandler Wood (@FinchStrife) March 17, 2022
Hogwarts Legacy will feature an immersive, open-world within the same Harry Potter universe, but several decades before the events of the movies.
“Players will experience life as a student at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry in the 1800s as they embark on a dangerous journey to uncover a hidden truth of the wizarding world,” reads a press release. “They will grow their magical abilities by mastering spells, brewing potions, taming magical beasts, and more.”
As for author J.K. Rowling, Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment notes that she “has entrusted the design and creation of the games to Warner Bros. Games and the developers involved.”
While not involved directly, “her team has collaborated with Warner Bros. Games on all aspects of Hogwarts Legacy to ensure it remains a true part of the Wizarding World experience and is in line with the creativity and magic that fans expect.”
Hogwarts Legacy was originally slated for a release in 2021 before being pushed in 2022, a delay which was linked to production challenges birthed by the COVID-19 pandemic as well as some parts of the story and characters being rewritten.
