You may be thinking "Whiskey Tango Foxtrot!?" after reading that headline, but yes, it's true. Deus Ex: Mankind Divided, a title meant to be among the "first wave" of DX12-enabled games, won't actually support the new API on the game's August 23 release day.
This move comes as a surprise, to say the least. Last year, Square-Enix made a point of showing off a video of the game's "Dawn Engine" that highlighted plenty of fancy graphical effects. The publisher then went on to specifically say that Mankind Divided would be infused with Microsoft's new graphics API at launch. AMD has also touted the game's DirectX 12 support in its own promotional efforts.
Fans looking forward to enjoying DX:MD's DX12 renderer will have to wait a while, though. In a Steam Community post, the Deus Ex team revaled that it needed some time for "extra work and optimizations" on the DirectX 12 front. On a more positive note, it seems that the team needs only two weeks, as it says an updated version with DirectX 12 support should come around on September 5.
Deus Ex: Mankind Divided has already suffered a six-month delay, as it was originally set to be released this February. A late-but-polished release is always better than a rushed one, though, so we can only hope the delay means we'll have a solid, optimized DX12 implementation when the game goes gold.