14 DAY TRIAL // Take Two seems unable to keep a steady release date for some of its titles and Mafia II might take over from Splinter Cell: Conviction the title of “Most Likely To Never Be Released.” The publishers announced that despite earlier reports both Red Dead Redemption and Mafia II would not make it to gamers on time, mainly due to the packed release schedule for the coming months and because Take Two tries to make sure that the games are in top shape before they are out.
Red Dead Redemption was expected to be launched on April 27 but now gamers must wait for it until May 18 in North America and May 21 in the rest of the world. The Western might have been pushed back because of trouble at the San Diego studio of Rockstar, prompted by an effort to improve the working conditions of employees.
Red Dead Redemption is a Western that Strauss Zelnick, the chairman of Take Two, has described as a very good videogame to launch just as gamers are coming out of a recession. The title is set to arrive on the PlayStation 3 from Sony and the Xbox 360 from Microsoft. Mafia II was also supposed to arrive in the first six months of 2010, although 2K Czech and Take Two never settled on a clear date. The game is now slated for the fourth fiscal quarter of the current year, which goes from August to October. Let's hope that there's no further delay for one of the most expected titles when it comes to open world games.
In the aforementioned quarter, Take Two plans to out Max Payne 3, the long in development L.A. Noire and the newly announced Civilization V from Firaxis and Sid Meier. Given past history, expect at least one of the these titles to be pushed back for the next quarter.