Blue Protocol Release Date | Is a Blue Protocol western release planned?

Bandai Namco announced Blue Protocol in July 2019, with the anime MMORPG garnering an enthusiastic reception from all over the world. Developed with Unreal Engine 4 and the experience of a talented group of developers, this is the kind of game that looked like a playable anime. Suddenly, everyone wanted to know the Blue Protocol release date, but the devs were keeping quiet about it.

Blue Protocol Release Date| Is Blue Protocol releasing soon?

When it was announced, Bandai Namco immediately revealed the first Blue Protocol test date. It was a closed alpha test, running for a brief three days. With very limited player spots, the initial batch of 5,000 lucky players  was soon doubled to 10,000, and the alpha test ran during the following days:

• July 26, 2019 (Friday) to July 28, 2019 (Sunday).

The test was exclusive to Japan, with plenty of Blue Protocol info popping up soon afterwards. Bandai Namco even revealed an interesting breakdown of player feedback and what the studio was going to work on after the test.

However, there wasn't much beyond that to sink your teeth into. The development team went silent for many months, with no word on a Blue Protocol release date, even for Japan.

Here is everything you need to know about the Blue Protocol release date:

• Japan closed alpha: July 26, 2019 – July 28, 2019
• Japan closed beta: April 23, 2020 – April 26, 2020
• Japan release date: 2021
• Western release date: 2024

Is Blue Protocol releasing in the west?

With Japan as the priority for the Blue Protocol launch, there wasn't much to learn about a Blue Protocol western release date. However, the hype was so real that Bandai Namco felt the need to clarify the community's requests.

The statement wasn't exactly what western players wanted to hear – there are no plans for a Blue Protocol western release at the moment, and this is subject to change. Since Bandai Namco said that it wanted to “impress the world” with Blue Protocol, and Korean, Russian, English and Portuguese language files were located in the alpha client, a global release sounded very likely.

Furthermore, we have to take into consideration that Asian launches usually follow a standardized pattern. The home release is the priority, in this case Japan (most of the times it's South Korea), then the next step should be taking the game to Korea, followed by Russia, and only then North America and Europe. If we had to guess, we'd say that Blue Protocol releases in the west sometime in 2021. A Blue Protocol English localization job offer revealed in February 2020 confirms that there are plans to bring the game to western territories.

During the third livestream, the devs confirmed that a Blue Protocol global release is indeed planned. Apparently, the idea was to launch the game  at a global scale from the start, but things have changed in the meantime, with Japan being the first territory and others following soon after:

“In the interviews, we have said that it was intended to go global from the start BUT CBT, as it follows CaT we will test CBT in japan for feedback purposes. Will it be global or be certain regions; we can't really say right now. (They will probably start with EU and NA first) We're still preparing but japan will release first. Since it is designed [to be] very Japanese and will be interesting to a global audience so we don't want to represent this style half-assed to the rest of the world.”

Fast forward to 2023, when it was confirmed that Amazon Games grabbed the rights for a western release, something that they did previously and with some success for Lost Ark. Blue Protocol's release date is set for 2024, it will be free-to-play and launch on PC, Xbox Series X|S and PlayStation 5.