According to recent reports from Nifty News, Level-5 has recently faced mass departure of many employees recently, which has led to a loss of manpower and productivity which, in turn, may be the major reason why their newer games keep getting delayed.
Excerpt from Main Source (Translated)
...In addition, due to the massive withdrawal of Level-5 employees, the production of their major games has lagged behind schedule. The Nintendo Switch exclusive game "Yo-kai Watch 4", which was slated to be released this winter, has been postponed to Spring 2019.
Akihiro Hino, CEO of Level-5, recently revealed in a live news update for the game Inazuma Eleven Ares that the game had been partially outsourced to another studio who also did not have enough employees to finish the game on time, to which Level-5 was not aware of and ended up restarting and outsourcing work to another studio. This is not the first time in recent memory that Level-5 has outsourced one of their games. Yo-kai Watch Busters 2 was also outsourced to Digital Works Entertainment Inc. and ended up receiving a slight delay shortly before release.
However, due to the unknown reliability of the main source, I am marking this as a rumor.
Original Source (Japanese): https://news.nifty.com/article/domestic/society/12184-44804/
Last edited by NebulousNeon,