Hogwarts Legacy release date announced, and it brings disappointment

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Bleeding hex

Harry Potter screaming in disappointment at Hogwarts Legacy delay
(Image credit: Warner Bros)

 Last we had heard, Hogwarts Legacy, the Harry Potter RPG set in a Victorian-era version of the wizarding school, was going to be coming out around Christmas 2022. However, publisher Warner Bros has revealed the final Hogwarts Legacy release date, and we’ve lousy news.

Yes, the Harry Potter game has been held back again and won’t be graduating in 2022. Instead, the Hogwarts Legacy release date is February 10, 2023. And that’s if you want to play Xbox Series X, PS5, or PC. There’s worse news for Nintendo Switch fans.

While Warner Bros says it’s committed to releasing the Nintendo Switch version of Hogwarts Legacy, it can’t say when it will be ready. Considering, what the developer revealed at the Sony State of Play, it’s not surprising getting the open-world RPG running smoothly on Nintendo’s console is proving a challenge.

The delay into 2023 may be disappointing for you. Still, personally speaking, with so many upcoming games crammed together into the coming months, it’s frankly a bit of a relief to see a massive game like Hogwarts Legacy take a step back. I want to be able to really immerse myself into school life and not feel pressured to wrap up my campaign to start playing God of War Ragnarok or Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2. (You may think they’re pretty different games from Harry Potter, but I’m allowed to have varied tastes.)

While Hogwarts Legacy can’t escape the influence of the books’ author, we've been impressed each time we’ve seen the game in action. While the old Playstation games were a joy, they pale compared to the sheer scope of Hogwarts Legacy. As well as a whole suite of skills you’ll be able to train your young magician in, the combat looks to be much deeper than you may expect, letting you create complicated combos by layering different styles of spells on top of one another – levitating enemies to disable them before hitting them with fireballs, for instance.

While we have to wait a few months longer than we expected, it looks like 2023 will start with a strong contender for Game of the Year.

Julian Benson
Julian Benson
Contributor, TechRadar Gaming

Julian's been writing about video games for more than a decade. In that time, he's always been drawn to the strange intersections between gaming and the real world, like when he interviewed a NASA scientist who had become a Space Pope in EVE Online,  or when he traveled to Ukraine to interview game developers involved in the 2014 revolution, or that time he tore his trousers while playing Just Dance with a developer.