Delay of Game, 5 Yard Penalty, First Down

Scribbled on July 18th, 2009 by Jordan Lund
Filed in Editorial Content, Release Date(s), Rumor Mill, Sony PlayStation 3, WTF

The Year of the PlayStation 3 has been perpetually pushed back since before the console even launched. Famously the “Spring Launch” that was hailed by fanboys everywhere was pushed back to Fall, except in Europe where it was pushed back a full year, so I guess they did have their Spring launch anyway, just not in 2006.

DelayStation indeed.

With the release of hot titles like Killzone 2, God of War III and Heavy Rain, 2009 was finally supposed to be the year of the PlayStation 3 after lackluster sales for previous titles on the system.

Well, hold on just a minute here. Looks like we’re going to have to push that back to 2010, along with most of the anticipated titles this year.

God of War III – Sequel to the two extremely popular PS2 titles and one PSP game. Announced by Sony at the E3 show in 2008, everyone expected it to be out shortly – until a year later at E3 2009 when it was announced for March of 2010.
Heavy Rain – Former SCEE President David Reeves said that Heavy Rain would be “the most important title of 2009.” It might have been if it actually came out in 2009. It’s also been delayed until 2010 as well.
M.A.G. – When Sony announced the 256 player Massive Action Game (M.A.G.) at E3, the press was notably excited, particularly when we were all told the game would be out in the Fall. But retailers are now listing it with the infamous “January” date, code for “We don’t know when the heck it will be out.”
Gran Turismo 5 - Can you say it’s “delayed” when it’s been vaporware for so many years? Speculation has been that it would be out in time for Christmas 2009, but that speculation is now slipping also to 2010 (and let’s not even discuss Gran Turismo 4 Mobile for the PlayStation Portable, which was announced in E3 2004.)
White Knight Chronicles – The PS3 game I’ve been looking forward to for some time is White Knight Chronicles. It released in Japan at the end of 2008 and since it usually takes a year to localize Japanese games folks figured it would be out in 2009. Nope. You probably see a pattern here…
Fat Princess – The highly anticipated PSN title has been delayed til later in the Summer, but from experiences, would it be a shocker if it slipped to the Fall or even Winter?

NOW for the good news.

It looks like Uncharted 2: Among Thieves is still on track for a November release. Ratchet and Clank: A Crack in Time still looks like a Fall release, although the previous game sold so poorly (less than 150,000 units in the first month, at Thanksgiving!) that might not matter. The expected release date for Final Fantasy XIII has always been 2009 in Japan and 2010 everywhere else, that doesn’t appear to have changed at all.

The question in my mind is what does this all mean for the rumored PlayStation 3 Slim? If you’re going to do something dramatic with the hardware and (hopefully) cut the price shouldn’t you also have some spiffy new software to go with it? Or are they going to do what they’ve done all along? Have a launch and then say “No, really, the cool stuff will be out next year… honest.”

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