Developer Crows Crows Crows recently took to Twitter to announced that within the first 24 hours of its launch, The Stanley Parable: Ultra Deluxe sold over 100,000 on Steam alone. Those are impressive numbers by most metrics, and even more so when you consider that the first person adventure title is available in numerous platforms. While Crows Crows Crows hasn’t provided any details on the game’s sales on consoles, one would assume that the cumulative figures will be similarly solid.

The Stanley Parable: Ultra Deluxe is available now on PS5, Xbox Series X/S, PS4, Xbox One, Nintendo Switch, and PC.

In the first 24 hours after its release, The Stanley Parable: Ultra Deluxe has sold over 100,000 copies on Steam!

We're blown away by the response so far. Massive thanks to everyone who's playing, streaming and sharing! pic.twitter.com/72vdhobQrR

— Crows Crows Crows (@crowsx3) April 28, 2022

The story is fairly simple, focusing on a man named Stanley who works in his office, pressing buttons. Life seems pretty good until all of his co-workers suddenly vanish. A narrator (voiced by Kevan Brighting) conveys all of this and it’s up to you whether Stanley follows his instructions or goes against them.

The entire 2013 experience is still here but with enhanced visuals and accessibility features like colorblind options, content warnings and so on. In terms of new content, there are new choices to be made and secrets to find but much like the original, it’s best to go in completely blind. Stay tuned for details on subsequent patches and updates in the coming weeks.

Originally starting life as a Half-Life 2 mod, The Stanley Parable as we know it today first launched in 2013. Nearly a decade later, The Stanley Parable: Ultra Deluxe is being touted as a major expansion of the original game with a longer script an new narrative content, with the developers saying that it “dramatically expands the world of the original game with new content, new choices, and new secrets”.

The Stanley Parable: Ultra Deluxe will launch on April 27 for PS5, Xbox Series X/S, PS4, Xbox One, Nintendo Switch, and PC (via Steam).

Well, as you may have expected that’s not happening- but it seems like the wait for it won’t be too long either way. Following recent teases, developers Galactic Cafe and Crows Crows Crows recently confirmed that The Stanley Parable: Ultra Deluxe will now launch sometime in early 2022. The game is apparently finally content-complete now, which should provide some assurances about whether or not it will be able to hit that launch window.

Meanwhile, writer/designer Davey Wreden also recently took to Twitter to explain the numerous and long delays over the last three years, explaining that Ultra Deluxe, which was originally envisioned as “a much smaller, simpler project”, turned out to be a much bigger game as their vision for it kept expanding during the course of development.

Wreden also said that a specific release date hasn’t yet been announced not only because there’s still work to be done on the game, but also because the developers want to avoid releasing it in a crowded release window (such as the jampacked February), while the upcoming Holiday season will also see development slowing down temporarily.

Whenever it launches The Stanley Parable: Ultra Deluxe will be available for consoles and PC. There’s still no clarity on what exactly consoles means in this case- will it be on the Switch? Will it be cross-gen on PlayStation and Xbox? Here’s hoping we find out soon.

Originally this was meant to be a much smaller, simpler project. But as things went on we kept having more and more ideas that felt exciting and fun to us, and we had to do it. I'm glad we did, but it's taken quite a while to cram it all in there.

— Davey Wreden (@HelloCakebread) December 2, 2021

A second reason is we have to actually submit the game for certification on consoles, which would take a while anyway, but with the holidays coming up people are going to just be less available than usual.

— Davey Wreden (@HelloCakebread) December 2, 2021

https://twitter.com/HelloCakebread/status/1466456604715327488

The developer apologized for the “radio silence” and notes that it’s been “hard at work” on the game. Perhaps there will be some new gameplay along with a release date announcement. At this point, given the number of other titles that have been delayed into 2022, seeing it follow suit wouldn’t be surprising.

The Stanley Parable: Ultra Deluxe is in development for consoles and PC. Along with being ported to Unity Engine, it will have new content and endings for players to dive into. Stay tuned for more details when the announcement premieres tomorrow.