14 DAY TRIAL // Ubisoft says that the PC version of the H.A.W.X. flight game is now set to release one week later than thought, on March 20. The Tom Clancy-branded game should launch at the date on which it was initially scheduled, March 6, for the Xbox 360 console from Microsoft and the PlayStation 3 from Sony.
Ubisoft has not offered any reason for the delay, but this stands to reason that the French publisher might be worried about the threat of piracy. Because of the ease with which you can pirate a videogame on the PC, major publishers, who tend to do multiplatform releases for their biggest titles, have begun staggering their release dates, putting the dates for the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 before the PC. The idea is that those who want the title and are willing to pay, will get it on gaming consoles on release date or in the first week, while the PC version will arrive later, so that if it is pirated, the impact is as limited as possible.
The PC version of EndWar, another Ubisoft published Tom Clancy-branded game, has just come out, while the home console versions were launched in late 2008. Now, H.A.W.X. is being delayed by one week. When BioWare announced that the launch of Dragon Age: Origins for the PC, which was set to come quite a while before the release of the console version, was pushed back, most analysts said that the developer was concerned about piracy.
H.A.W.X. is set to offer players a chance to take quite a wide selection of planes to the skies of the near future. The plot would tell the story of a young pilot who rises through the ranks as a global war between Private Military Companies and other entities is raging. A lot of details, mainly satellite maps, were used to make the settings for the battles as real as possible. The title will be more arcade-like than simulation, offering players a lot of customization options in regard to how much of the flying they want to directly manage.