During a call with investors, Take-Two explained that Evolve's delay stemmed from a desire to provide Turtle Rock with additional time to polish the game. "We are encouraged by the overwhelmingly positive response from press and fans, and believe by extending development by a few months, it will allow the team enough time to fully realize their creative vision for Evolve," president Karl Slatoff said.

In response to a question about the delay later in the call, Take-Two CEO Strauss Zelnick added, "Historically, we've always benefited from giving the creative teams more time to polish the titles; we've never regretted it." He also noted some of the other benefits of the delay, describing February as a "pretty terrific release window. It's not at all crowded, and we will benefit from the fact that there are a lot of holiday sales of consoles so the install base will be bigger."