HAZE Pushed (Again) News
Jon Wilcox
23/01/2008
Ubisoft confirms that the release of the Free Radical Design shooter has been pushed back to the 2008/09 fiscal year...
Originally planned for release before Christmas, Ubisoft has today confirmed that HAZE will miss its revised launch date during March, and is now expected sometime in the 2008/09 fiscal year.
The publisher's business year, which runs from April 1st 2008 to March 31st 2009, will also see the release of Splinter Cell: Conviction on Xbox 360, Tom Clancy's Air Combat, Brothers in Arms: Hell's Highway and Prince of Persia 4.
News of the latest delay comes on the same day that the publisher announced upward revisions to its full fiscal year financial results, with the forecast standing at 875 million Euros from 840 million Euros, which was estimated back in December. The run up to Christmas proved successful for Ubisoft, with Assassin's Creed ending up the second biggest seller on Xbox 360 and the best seller on PlayStation 3. Third quarter sales rose to 450 million Euros, up 44% on the year.
Speaking about today's released financial results, Yves Guillemot, Chief Executive Officer of Ubisoft, stated "The vast majority of our games reaped the benefits of particularly strong market momentum over the Christmas period. Two new long term multi-million franchises were created, Assassin's Creed and Imagine, generating sell-in sales of 5 and 2.5 million units respectively. They will join our existing portfolio of 12 franchises. As a result, Ubisoft moved up from fourth to third place in the overall ranking of independent publishers in 2007 - a year that saw the video game industry enter new dimension with previously unheard-of visibility."
"This revolution stems from the greater accessibility of Nintendo's consoles as well as from the superb cinema-like visual experience provided by Sony and Microsoft consoles. We expect this situation to significantly drive up market performance once again in 2008, with overall market growth representing at least 10%. Against this backdrop, Ubisoft will continue to leverage its strong brands and design capacities with a view to outperforming the market."
Obviously HAZE's delay will mean that PS3 gamers will remain anxious to play what is now one of the most anticipated titles of 2008 - but how will today's news affect the release of time-delayed Xbox 360 launch is unclear. Officially the title is a PlayStation3 exclusive, but TVG was told at UbiDay 2007 last May that an Xbox 360 version (which had been previously announced) was running at Free Radical's UK studio.