It’s getting to the point where we’re starting to think that early in the holiday season, the game store shelves will be completely devoid of high-profile new releases. Ubisoft announced this today Far cry 3 is the latest 2012 game to have its scheduled release pushed back from a scheduled early September release to a new target of December 4 in North America and November 29 in other markets.
There are a few ways to interpret such a delay. It could be seen as a bold decision to value quality over commercialism, sacrificing the sales that could come from an early holiday season release out of respect for the time it takes to make a truly great game. Or it could mean that the game comes together so poorly that any version released in September would have been incredibly poorly received. The game certainly looked good at the E3 demo earlier this month, so we’re inclined to take the former interpretation, but you really never know.
The publisher’s announcement – which will apply to the Xbox 360, PC and PS3 versions of the final game, but will not affect a multiplayer beta slated to roll out in the “summer” – quotes the standard, clichéd explanation that’s been around almost every game lag these days: “We’re taking more time to create the best gameplay experience possible… we want every element of this crazy, action-packed adventure to be of the highest possible quality for the players. ” The Far cry 3 Twitter account rolled out even more banalities about the delay, including “a rushed game goes bad forever” and “if you can still play, it’s worth it!”
All these statements are undoubtedly true, as far as they go, but offer little consolation Distant scream fans impatient for their next fix. Fortunately, the creators of competitive shooters like it Halo 4, black ops 2And Borderlands 2 will be happy to fill the gap left in the September to October release window… as long as those games don’t see any late-in-the-game delays either.