Blizzard and Activision announced in an earnings report on Wednesday that they have decided to push back Blizzard’s highly anticipated StarCraft II until at least spring 2010. Additionally, they also said that Activision’s first-person shooter Singularity is also being delayed and probably won’t hit store shelves for another couple months.
Both Singularity and StarCraft II were initially slated for a release in late 2009.
In May, Blizzard announced that beta testing for StarCraft II was open for registration, leading gamers to speculate that the long awaited sequel to the hit real-time strategy classic StarCraft was finally nearing completion. StarCraft II was originally announced in May 2007.
According to Blizzard, the StarCraft II that goes on sale in 2010 will be the base game and the first campaign. Entitled Wings of Liberty, the first campaign will follow the Terran race and includes 26-30 missions. The campaigns for the Zerg and Protoss will ship in two separate expansion packs called Heart of the Swarm and Legacy of the Void respectively. No time table for the expansion packs have been announced yet.
Even though a campaign for all three of StarCraft’s playable races will not be immediately available to play, gamers will be able to command the three factions in StarCraft II’s fully functional multiplayer. The game’s multiplayer will utilize Blizzard’s revamped Battle.net service which, according to Activision, is slated to launch simultaneously with StarCraft II.
StarCraft II and Singularity are not the only games that have fallen victim to delays. A number of high profiles titles like 2K’s Bioshock 2 and Ubisoft’s Splinter Cell: Conviction were originally scheduled to be released in the last quarter of 2009, but are now set to ship sometime in early 2010.
The primary reason for many of these delays is that developers and publishers more than likely do not want to square off against the inevitably fierce competition during the holiday season. Not only is Microsoft coming up with a new Halo title with Halo 3: ODST, but Activision is also releasing Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare 2.
Halo 3 and Call of Duty 4 are famous for being one of the most popular gaming franchises for current generation consoles. Halo 3 broke records by making $170 million in its first day on sale. Additionally, sales figures for Modern Warfare 2 are expected to be high, particularly because Activision announced yesterday that its garnered more pre-orders than any other game in the company’s history.
