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Crackdown 3 will launch February 15

It's taken several years, but now it looks like Crackdown 3 is really happening, and it's coming out in February.

The long-awaited and frequently-delayed Crackdown 3 has a firm release date: the sandbox game about fighting crime and demolishing things will launch February 15, 2019.

Microsoft announced the release date this weekend, and also unveiled a new multiplayer mode for Crackdown 3 called Wrecking Zone – in this mode, players team up into teams of five and destroy as much of the environment as possible in deathmatch.

As entertaining as Wrecking Zone is likely to be, the big news here is the certainty of the release date. Crackdown 3 has had a fraught development, with the original release date set for 2016. It was eventually delayed until late 2017, then again to spring this year.

At that point, Microsoft apparently put its sizeable foot down and said this delay would be the last, setting a non-negotiable release window for February 2019. Now it seems Crackdown 3 is still on track to hit that target, and February 15 is when we’ll be able to see what the years of development have managed to achieve.

Here’s a new trailer for the Wrecking Zone multiplayer mode:


As you can see, the idea basically to take your normal 5v5 deathmatch mode and set it in a ridiculously-destructible environment that’s powered by Microsoft’s cloud computing capabilities. Skyscraper-sized structures come crumbling down while players are running around in them, and that’s really the big appeal for Crackdown 3.

Well, that and Terry Crews.