Metro: Last Light’s new owners reschedule a return to the Russian wasteland, promise new games

The dissolution of THQ was more harrowing for some gaming industry professionals than others. For THQ Montreal, Patrice Desilet’s 1666 wasn’t even close to release. The studio’s transition to Ubisoft after being acquired by the publisher at auction should accommodate the steady creation of the game. The upheaval was likely hell on developers like 4A Games, though. Its game Metro: Last Light was supposed to ship at the end of March. Kind of hard to put the final spit and polish on a game when it’s not especially clear how will fund putting it out.

All’s well that ends well. Metro: Last Light found a new home with Koch Media’s Deep Silver imprint, and though it won’t come out in March, fans eager to wander the wastes of mid-21^st century Russia won’t have to wait long. The game will be out on May 14. What’s more, Deep Silver and Koch Media are apparently already planning future installments in the series.

“Since it has been made public that we took over the Metro franchise, the fans keep asking for a release date,” said Deep Silver’s Menno van der Bill in a Friday press release, “We would like to thank all of the Metro fans for their patience. And we can assure them that we have a lot more coming their way with the franchise.”

In the mean time, 4A Games is going to use the remaining weeks to continue tweaking the game’s performance. “We won’t leave that time unexploited and will work closely with 4A Games to make the game even better,” said Koch CEO Dr. Klemens Kundratitz, “It will receive all the attention it deserves.”

The company did not elaborate on whether or not these plans for Metro’s release include a change in platform. While the game’s scheduled for Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3, 4A Games is building Last Light much like it did Metro 2033, making the PC edition its primary version. It’s possible that advanced version of the game may make the jump to PlayStation 4 and Xbox 720 later this year.

Metro: Last Light has changed multiple times in the past year. First, 4A Games abandoned a planned Nintendo Wii U version of the game and publicly slammed Nintendo’s console, saying it had a “horrible, slow CPU.” 4A also canceled planned multiplayer modes for the game, opting instead to focus solely on the campaign.