Thursday, September 16, 2004

Half-Life 2 Release Candidate

Gabe Newell has confirmed that the release candidate for Half-Life 2 has been submitted to Vivendi.

The question, of course, is the release date. Everyone's being all shy like they're at a seventh grade dance. It really doesn't wear well. Valve claimed the game was going to be released last fall, but we all know now that there was absolutely zero chance the game would have made it, even without the code theft. I think it would be a very good public relations move to just tell us the damn release date at this point.

They're not going to, though, so here's some speculation. Vivendi could spend a week with the release candidate and it could still go gold by the 20th. That's enough time to begin duplication and get it into the stores by the end of the month so that it would make Vivendi's third quarter. There's no reason not to do that, really. So even though EB and Gamestop are still saying November, I wouldn't be surprised if there's an announcement early next week about a September 30th release.

That's if the release candidate is in good shape. If it's not, the fallback is two more months of work and release in November.

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