» Fri May 27, 2011 10:41 am
Well, for starters, the developer says it isn't ready, and they probably know more about it then you do.
I know it isn't complete, because it's not released yet, it isn't even gold yet, and they don't even talk about some parts of the game, like multiplayer yet. What do you think they are doing these days, looking at the calendar, trying to pick a release date?
Games are usually content complete months before release, but thats very far from being finished. There is a lot of bug-fixing, balancing, fine-tuning, polishing, netcode-improving and performane-optimizing to do. If you skip that part, the game is gonna be a buggy, unbalanced, unoptimized mess. In that case it surely wont sell, unless there is a well known brand name attached to it which people would blindly buy. Rage is a new IP, you can't afford to release it half-assed. (and to be honest, we don't even know if Rage is content complete yet.)
Devs and Pubs usually don't pick a release date after the game is complete. They pick one in advance, on which they can realistically release according to their plans and current progress. There is probably a good reason they didn't pick June or July - the game won't be ready yet. Also, do you think nobody at id or bethesda is aware of Gears3? They knows it's coming in the same month, but they still think they can sell enough to make their own game a success.
Not to mention June and July are usually quiet months in the games industry. The only big game that was released in those moths and sold really well recently is Starcraft2, which is also a sequel of an already well known game. (I might be missing sth tho...) It's August when the sales usually pick up again. If they finish the game ahead of schedule, they will probably try to bring the release date forward to August, but it's just as possible that they have to delay it again, because it's still won't be done by mid-sept. In the end, they picked the current date because thats when they think they'l be ready
"Hey, and if the game isn't done by July, it sure in the hell won't be ready by Sept"
That statement doesn't make any sense, unless there is some mythical force that prevents them from working on the game in July and August. It's absolutely possible that they couldn't finish sth 'till July on which they could work on in those two months.
"they have had what 7 years? 8 years? LOL I'm done... "
The game was officially announced in August 2007. Sure, they've been working on it before that, but I doubt it was for 3-4 years. Also id is a smaller studio than most other AAA FPS devs. That means they take more time, but their budgets are somewhat smaller. They built a new engine too, instead of just adding some minor stuff to an already existing one. New IPs always take longer even when you don't make new tech for it, because you cannot reuse assets from the previous games.