After a series of long silences, we now know some more about Blue Protocol. Bandai Namco held a live stream today to make several significant announcements. A network test is coming in mid-January, and there's a new initial release window of Spring 2023, and a presence at next month’s The Game Awards on December 8th.
As part of the announcements (via, Siliconera), basic development on Blue Protocol is complete. The team’s focus has shifted to balance changes, polish, debugging, and other work in late development. This matches up with recent speculation after some spotted that Bandai Namco had made some filings in Korea that usually happen when games are close to completion.
The network test will take place from January 14-16, 2023 and will give the team an idea of how the servers hold up in terms of capacity and stability. With the spring launch target, things might change if the network test results aren’t what they’re hoping for, so this might be another reason why there’s just a window for now and nothing more solid.
January's test will have a cap of 50,000 participants, and be Japan-only. They are currently taking applications and if there are more than 50,000, they'll use a lottery system to send invites. the spring 2023 release window is for the initial launch in Japan, so we’ll have to wait some time for more info on global release plans, but it’s still something after Bandai Namco was quiet about development for so long.
Today’s stream included lots of additional info, including PC specs. Top-end settings on a Windows 11 PC recommend Nvidia RTX2070 Super. It looks like the game will support Windows 10 and 11 64-bit and DirectX 11 or 12.
The new trailer released today after the presentation shows off some of the important characters, the world, and the threats they’ll face. From huge bosses to riding across the land, to some…group dancing, there’s a lot to unpack.
