14 DAY TRIAL // The fall and winter seasons used to be really stocked in terms of high-end blockbuster video games, as almost all of the big publishers around the world were betting big on the fact that many gamers would spend all of their budget on new titles.
But it seems that after last year's “flood” of games, which led to an oversaturated market, the big corporations aren't that willing to gamble with their brand-new projects, or even their highly anticipated sequels. That's why we've been hearing about delays left and right in recent weeks.
The latest big company to join this trend is Ubisoft, which has just unveiled during a conference call to investors that four of its biggest titles announced for the end of this year will be delayed to the beginning of 2010. These titles are the highly anticipated Splinter Cell Conviction, Red Steel 2, I Am Alive and Ghost Recon.
“We are disappointed that we have to postpone the release of several major games but we consider that this choice is the best one in the long-term interests of Ubisoft,” said the CEO of the company, Yves Guillemot. “Lastly, we are having to adjust our full-year targets to take into account the fall in business over the first half. The excellent response to our games at E3, as well as the high buzz generated for titles such as Assassin's Creed 2, Splinter Cell Conviction and Avatar, reinforce our belief that the company can achieve strong growth in the second half of the fiscal year.”
Splinter Cell and Red Steel 2 are now scheduled to appear in the company's last quarter of the 2009 fiscal year, placing their release window between January and March 2010. I Am Alive and Ghost Recon will arrive after that, in fiscal 2010, which starts next April.
Overall, this piece of news will certainly make a lot of people extremely sad, but according to Guillemot this time will be useful for the development teams to eliminate all of the bugs and to polish up the video games.