As of writing this, it is 9:50am EST. and the digital download edition of Marvel vs. Capcom: Infinite is still locked, even though the games release date is today.  Last night I pre-ordered and downloaded Marvel vs Capcom: Infinite so that I could play it at 12am EST , the time that games usually unlock on their release date, allowing you to start them up.  However, I kept getting the message “We know you really want to get started, but you’ll have to wait a bit longer.  Check the store for the launch date.”  Funny, the launch date has come and gone.  Considering the fact that you could go to Walmart right now to pick up a copy of this, this is a huge bungle for a few reasons…

 One, if you bought it on Xbox Live with the intent to play all night because you had the next day off, there is a very high probability you can’t get a refund so that you can just go buy a physical copy instead.  Two, there are a lot of “same week” MVCI tournaments going on.  For the average player, half a day of not being able to play may not seem like a big deal, however, for people who are trying to compete that’s half a day worth of finding out what character combos work best for them that they are going to lose.  Finally, in the Xbox Live store ON Xbox, there was no “time” shown on 9\18\19 for the release of the game, just the date of 9\19\19.  However, randomly sometime between 2am last night, and now, Xbox has added a 12pm time stamp to the release date on the Xbox Live Store.  After scrolling through reddit posts on /r/mvci this time stamp was actually on the Xbox Live Store website but not on the actual store that shows up on the console until sometime in the last few hours.  Now, realistically this isn’t a HUGE deal, but the issue is that customers feel lied to, and or, that Capcom is “screwing up again”, as their reputation over the last few years has become stressed with their fan base.   On top of that, Xbox fans aren’t the only one suffering.  Apparently, steam users are also still waiting for the game to unlock. 

Now, all anyone can do is play the waiting game. That said, over the last 100+ digital games I’ve downloaded, I’ve never once had one not release at 12am on the day it came out. It’s not a good look from Capcom for a game who’s already received quite a bit of criticism over this game.