Erik Rutins
Posts: 37503
Joined: 3/28/2000 From: Vermont, USA Status: offline
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I think most gamers are used to the schedules followed by the mainstream publishers, which are aimed at retail distribution. Based on those schedules, the gap between gold master and retail shelf can be 4-6 weeks due to physical production times and distribution snags. However, that pretty much means that 4-6 weeks before release, someone can say "this game is going to be out in a month". In our case, that gap is much smaller. We don't see any reason to keep you all waiting an additional 4-6 weeks, so we often have only a few days between gold master and release. In a few cases, it's been as little as a day if previous release candidates were well tested and stable. To make a long story short, I've been working on finishing the GM this week and weekend. It looks likely that I'll have it finished and ready for final checks by tonight. That makes a release by Wednesday (15th) likely. If there's a final snag of some kind, I still couldn't see this pushed back beyond next Monday or Tuesday (20th/21st). So, like I said - a release in February is certain, mid-February is likely. Believe me when I say we have no reason to want to hold release info back, we're just waiting to be sure before giving out the exact date - we're not sitting on the finished gold master and throwing darts at a calendar... Regards, - Erik
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