In a surprising move, Ubisoft has announced that the highly anticipated Watch Dogs has been delayed into 2014, citing a need for more time to polish the game as the main reason. They also pushed back The Crew, their open-world racing title which was initially pegged for US Spring 2014, but will now release sometime after the end of their 2013-2014 financial year (after April 1).

Our ambition from the start with Watch_Dogs has been to deliver something that embodies what we wanted to see in the next-generation of gaming. It is with this in mind that we’ve made the tough decision to delay the release until Autumn 2014.

We know a lot of you are probably wondering ‘why now?’ We struggled with whether we would delay the game. But from the beginning, we have adopted the attitude that we will not compromise on quality. As we got closer to release, as all the pieces of the puzzle were falling into place in our last push before completion, it became clear to us that we needed to take the extra time to polish and fine tune every detail so we can deliver a truly memorable and exceptional experience.

We would like to take this opportunity to thank all of you. We thoroughly enjoy and appreciate the way you respond on the web, at events, press conferences and during other opportunities we have to interact. Your passion is what drives us.

We can’t wait to see you in Chicago next Spring. We are confident you’ll love this game as much as we love working on it.

Sad news if you ask me, but if it means we're going to get a game of the utmost quality, then a slight delay is probably worth it. Besides, most of you will still be playing GTA V even then, and if not there's also still Assassin's Creed IV later this month.

Stay tuned for more on Watch Dogs as it becomes available to us here at AusGamers.