September 2026 is looking to be one of the most crowded months for games in history, as everyone with eyes on a fall release crowds into the few weeks before Grand Theft Auto 6 dominates everyone's attention. We're no doubt going to start seeing delays soon that push games clear of that blast zone—but during last week's Sony State of Play, one game moved closer to the epicenter.

That was Phantom Blade: Zero, the action RPG I flew to China to play last year. And according to game director Qiwei "Soulframe" Liang, GTA 6 didn't factor into the decision even a tiny bit.

"Many people may think we have some marketing strategy to move it from the overcrowded September, and some are very worried that it's closer to November," Liang said. "We don't think about any of this. We only think of the quality of the product itself. I don't think competition can influence, much, the success of a work. Only the product itself matters. So I would say 99% of the decision [was about] development."

I asked Liang directly if launching in the vicinity of Grand Theft Auto was scary. While PBZ's new date of October 29 is three weeks before Rockstar's new open world game drops, that's likely still too close for comfort for most big budget games that have been in development for half a decade, as Phantom Blade: Zero has. GTA's marketing campaign could easily be dominating minds by the start of November.

"I have no idea, actually," he said. "We don't think about what's happening there. We don't even think of the competition, what's launching ahead or after. What matters is how polished the game is, and if we have one or two extra months, we can fix more bugs, do more optimizations, so that we don't need a huge day one patch."

Liang wasn't thinking about Grand Theft Auto, but he was thinking about something else: the AI-driven PC hardware crisis. His team wants Phantom Blade: Zero to be able to run on the Steam Deck, which with Unreal Engine 5 is "a hard task," but they're going to try. And a key focus for the last polishing sprint will be making sure the game looks as good as it can with ray tracing disabled.

"This year the hardware price is going up, and people who want to replace their hardware may postpone their plan to upgrade their equipment, so we think we need to let the game be played by as many players as possible without reducing the quality."