Bandai Namco announced a June 2nd worldwide release date for Tekken 7 earlier today, and many fans were left scratching their heads.

The game was originally planned for an “early 2017” release window – June is at the beginning of summer, a far stretch from the first quarter of this year. To help explain why the game saw a slight delay, series producer Katsuhiro Harada responded (via GameSpot), and his answer is pretty enlightening.

“We were trying our best to get the game out at that time, to get it into the hands of users as early as possible,” project leader Katsuhiro Harada told press at an event in Tokyo.

“We saw some titles–some from our own company and some from others–which didn’t have a very good launch because of a lack of content, or whatever it was, that caused players to bash the product.”

While Harada didn’t name specific games, Street Fighter V comes to mind as it was missing traditional arcade and challenge modes at launch, not to mention a more fleshed out story mode.

Harada and his team worked to avoid running into the same predicament, choosing to instead go with their original content plan, “even if that meant the game would come a little later.”

This decision wasn’t easy to make, according to Harada.

“Although this is the first time we’ve actually announced a date, it wasn’t always June. It came through a process and we made some hard decisions and that was the result.” He went a bit further in his apology to fans, saying “‘early’ was probably March or April from your average person’s perspective, so we’re not going to try and sugar-coat it. We realise it’s not ‘early,’ I’m so sorry!”

It’s worth mentioning Tekken 7 has been available in arcades for some time now, however this version brings with it all the new content released in Tekken 7: Fated Retribution, new game modes, and a 30+ character roster.