Oblivion Delayed Till Next Year Options

[Kaleem]

Oblivion Delayed Till Year February - April 2006
http://xbox360.ign.com/articles/663/663056p1.html

http://www.gamespot.com/news/6136973.html

Sorry.

This post has been edited by Kaleem: Nov 1 2005, 03:07 PM

[Elongar]

Well, if Bethesda are releasing Oblivion in the holidays in the States, than surely they'd have finished tweaking the game by then? Why do Take-Two need longer to tweak the game than BethSoft? This leads me to believe it's marketing, and, how exactly is missing the Christmas selling point a good marketing strategy?

Then again, I don't know that much about the video games industry and I'm sure I've missed something...

[RobRendell]

Here are the links of relevance from the ongoing riot of a thread on the official forums:

Take2's official press release which unveiled the delay
Gamespot's write-up of the announcement
ABC news' write-up of the announcement
Audio (mp3) of Oblivion-specific snippets of the Take2 announcement

According to Take2's announcement, it was Bethesda that requested extra time. In the mp3 above, their wording for the decision to move Oblivion to fiscal Q2 2006 was that it was "based on Bethesda Softworks requiring addition development time to ensure the title meets gamers' high expectations for this popular franchise." So, that implies to me that it will be released by Bethesda in the US at the same time as it's released by Take2, because it's not Take2 that's delaying the release, but the folks at the source, Bethesda themselves.

Here's an additional data point for everyone: I pre-ordered Oblivion here in Australia through a place called GamesWarehouse.com.au, and just today I got an email from them which says:

Take 2 Australia, the publishers of The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion here in Australia, has let us know today that the release date for Elder Scrolls 4 has slipped to February 2006.

So, they claim they've had direct information from T2 (or at least, their Australian wing) saying February, which is more specific than the current info we have, "Fiscal Q2 2006" (which translates to February-April 2006).

Mind you, the official line both here and on the Bethesda forums is that retailers know nothing, and that any dates they give for Oblivion carry no weight, so take the above with whatever quantity of salt you consider appropriate (and healthy ).

This post has been edited by RobRendell: Nov 3 2005, 12:42 AM