The Watch Dogs delay includes all versions of the game, next gen and current gen. The team issued the follow statement:

“Our ambition from the start with Watch Dogs has been to deliver something that embodies what we wanted to see in the next-generation of gaming. It is with this in mind that we’ve made the tough decision to delay the release until Spring 2014.

“We know a lot of you are probably wondering ‘why now?’ We struggled with whether we would delay the game. But from the beginning, we have adopted the attitude that we will not compromise on quality. As we got closer to release, as all the pieces of the puzzle were falling into place in our last push before completion, it became clear to us that we needed to take the extra time to polish and fine tune every detail so we can deliver a truly memorable and exceptional experience.

“We would like to take this opportunity to thank all of you. We thoroughly enjoy and appreciate the way you respond on the web, at events, press conferences and during other opportunities we have to interact. Your passion is what drives us.

“We can’t wait to see you in Chicago next Spring. We are confident you’ll love this game as much as we love working on it.”

Originally, Watch Dogs was planned for November 19th in North America and November 22nd in Europe. Next generation console were to release a week later.

Those who had pre-ordered a PlayStation 4 bundle with the game will be honored and Sony is working with Ubisoft and various retail partners to work it out. GameStop and Amazon are contacting customers with such pre-orders to work something out, either by changing to a different bundle or getting a console on release and the game later on.

This is a big blow to the next generation of consoles as it is removing a big tentpole game in the launch lineup. Financial analysts say it will affect Ubisoft’s share price, but it also may affect launch sales of the new consoles.

Likewise, Ubisoft has The Crew was previously planned for fiscal year 2013-14 has been pushed back for fiscal year 2014-15. The earliest it will see release is April 2014.

The claim that the game encompasses the whole of the US has been described as a “poetic licence”  by Boukhelifa. However, he added,”It’s really massive, really huge. It’s over 10,000 km of road.”

In his words, the massively huge world map “opens the road to much, much more gameplay experiences than before. You have this huge open-world. We spent lots of time-building a physics model with the goal to create all the cars with differences in handling, but also to tune them and make them behave correctly whether you’re on a dirt track, completely off-road, roaming the mountains, on circuits.”

New gameplay and cars are added as the player progresses through the five regions which consist of the world of the game. Ivory Tower spent about a year in research and spent much time in deciding just how much to include. “We thought ‘big’, because we want this exploration, we want to [be able to] cross the desert, but not to be too big for the experience that was there.”

“So the size we have today, I think, is the perfect fit and balance for the game we wanted to do”.

Referring to the fact that the racer is like a MMO, Boukhelifa added,“The way we work is we split, technically speaking, the area around you is peer-to-peer, all the MMO services, they come from the server. Those MMO services can manage for everyone in the world from a selection of localized servers and those servers network together.”

Apparently, this means that there will not be a limit to the number of players in the game.

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Some details on the game have been leaked from a playtester who has released his impressions of the game. These impressions are as follows:

• The Crew is expected to play similar to Ubisoft Reflections most recent racer Driver: San Francisco, with a semi-arcade style of racing.
• As with Driver: San Francisco, The Crew will be open world with the ability to travel between New York City and Los Angeles, though the scale of these cities has been reduced.
• It is not clear whether you will travel through wilderness to reach each city or whether the game will simply load in each area.
• The Crew will also feature a similar ‘Google Maps’ style mechanic, presumably for navigating the open world.
• A ‘Freeride’ mode will be available too, which the option to choose between missions or challenges.
• Multiplayer will feature 8 players in either competitive or co-operative gameplay, though no more specific details were provided.
• As is the case with Ubisoft’s Watch Dogs – and presumably many of the publisher’s next-gen games – The Crew will come with a companion app for mobile devices.
• It is presumed that The Crew’s release date will be before the end of 2013, presumably to tie into a next-gen release. With such a close release date, it’s safe to assume The Crew will be announced at E3 2013.

According to the source of these details, The Crew was played on the Xbox 360 version of the game.

A recent tweet from the GamesLab Ubisoft Twitter account confirms that a playtest for a game did occur between May 29th and May 31st. Ubisoft was also explicitly looking for both arcade and simulation racing game fans to take part.