Red Faction: Armageddon Delayed to May 2011

Publisher THQ has announced that its shooter Red Faction: Armageddon would be delayed from its current launched date of March 2011 to May of the same year, taking it out of its current fiscal year in a move which is predicted to see net sales fall from 825 to about 800 million dollars when March 31, 2011 rolls around.

The delay announcement was not well received by the markets, with shares of THQ going down by about six percent when the launch date move was confirmed.

Red Faction: Armageddon will again take the player to Mars and will put him in the combat boots of one Darius Mason, the grandson of Alec Mason and Samanya, the two protagonists seen in Red Faction: Guerrilla.

The surface of Mars is now uninhabitable as a result of the fights between various factions and the survivors are moving underground, where Darius unwittingly lets loose an ancient alien menace.

The signature element of Guerrilla, the ability to destroy everything around the player and reshape the game world, will return in Armageddon, with new weapons and tools introduced to allow the Mars colonists to face the new threat and beat it back.

The first two Red Faction games were competent but not blockbuster shooters but Guerrilla has managed to attract a big audience with its destructible technology and now THQ is making the franchise a center point of its future strategy, ready to move Red Faction to television and even further.

THQ has already confirmed that it is working with the science fiction focused SyFy channel to create a TV movie, called Red Faction: Origins, that will air at the same time as Armageddon is launched, now in May 2011.

THQ is also rumored to be working on a whole series based around the Red Faction concept, possibly also exploring the background of major character and the fight of Martian colonists against Terran domination.