Mass Effect: Andromeda Art Book May Have Accidentally Revealed the Game’s Release Date

Bioware has been very cautious when releasing information for the forthcoming Mass Effect: Andromeda. Except for a short teaser from E3 and a brief preview at PlayStation’s PS4 Pro reveal, we’ve hardly learned anything concrete about the game, and seen next to no gameplay. Bioware will certainly have something planned for Nov. 7, a.k.a. N7 Day, but as of now, we’ve been mostly in the dark about the game.

However, thanks to a hardcover art book from Dark Horse, the game’s release date may have just been accidentally revealed.

The Art of Mass Effect: Andromeda was recently added to Amazon, described as featuring “never-before-seen art of the hotly anticipated game’s characters, arsenal, locations, vehicles, and more.” The Amazon description also says the book will be released on March 21, 2017, which isn’t big news in and of itself, except that it’s accompanied with this little tidbit: “Dark Horse will release The Art of Mass Effect: Andromeda simultaneously with the game!”

It’s possible that March 21 is just a temporary date (it does line up with the end of a fiscal quarter), but March isn’t an uncommon time for major game releases, and the 21st is a Tuesday, the typical weekday for videogame releases. It’s becoming a more common practice for AAA games to withhold information until they’re basically compete (Fallout 4 wasn’t officially announced until June of 2015, only five months before its release in November), so it’s not surprising that Bioware is doing the same here.

At the time of this writing, Bioware hasn’t commented on the date but if it is genuine, this certainly isn’t the way they were planning to reveal it. If they don’t comment on the art book, we’ll probably have to wait until Nov. 7 for the official word on Mass Effect: Andromeda, but for now, we’re already marking our calendars.