From the original planned August release. Which, really, isn't all that long. but we're talking about Star Citizen here, a game with such a huge and ambitious scope that any minor delay is probably viewed by a small number of people as a major cause for concern. As per developer Cloud Imperium Games the delay is due to the 3.0 Alpha of today being much larger in scope than the 3.0 that existed a year ago.

And includes planetary landings and exploration on a scale that we haven't seen before.



As per this post, CIG's Will Leverett notes that,"When venturing off into uncharted territory, one does not always see or know all of the challenges ahead of them; they are often complete unknowns until they present themselves along the way. We’ve pushed far past the technological boundaries that were previously considered impossible to build the foundation of the Star Citizen universe. Working on 3.0 has certainly introduced variables and challenges that we could never have anticipated, and these just do not always cater to a tidy date on a calendar."

And that, "The scope of 3.0 is not insignificant. It introduces a level of tech and infrastructure that’s an order of magnitude larger and more complex than all of our previous versions combined. There are thousands of new assets, millions of entities to manage, new UI, new features, multiple new backend services, etc. all being introduced in 3.0."

Sounds epic, and backers will only have to wait until September to check it out.