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

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

Sorry.

this is both good and bad.

If it doesnt get released until june of next year, the students in our audiance will have a much easier time being able to buy and play Oblivion. And this allows the whole swarm of PC gamers to get their crap in order to play a much more complete and balanced game. its much more of a blessing in disguise, than an unfortunate set back, but then again....

No Oblivion until next summer......but what the hey, ill be out of school by then

Hm. Best way to see if this is confirmed by Bethesda.

I am 90 percent sure that this is a hoax!

Even if this is true it's not a bad thing. They want to work on it more. I'm willing to wait longer for a more refined game, I have to for the next Zelda anyways.

I will only trust elderscrolls.com for bethesda news.

Wow, am i the only one pissed off that they're deciding to push back the date?

everyone seems all happy saying "they will make improvements...in summer, i will be playing a much better game"...

well, i already bought this game, and the xbox360 system out and now i dont know what im gunna do with this uber gaming machine, no money, and no games....

i seriously hope that take 2 dies and that bethesda releases it in the time they said they would.

i know some1 is gunna get all mad at me for no reason saying "durr your stupid, the release date was pushed back kus there was a bug.." well i dont care... i would have gladly wanted to see complete death and mayhem amoung the NPCs so i could stand on a tower and shoot them all with arrows.

but for what its worth, they best not change the date becuase they would be losing alot more than they will be gaining.

i may not have heard the whole story, but if it is true that they are gunna push the date back to Feb./Jan then i will cry

damn.

that sucks.


really.


now what the hell am i supposed to play when i get my 360 here in 21 days?

DOA4?!?!?!


crap.

well I don't know, I wasn't gonna get it right when it came out anyways....

I think I'll wait for official word from Beth before I believe anything about the release date being pushed back, there would have to be a serious problem with the game for it to miss holiday launch.

No holiday launch = less profit

I don't mind it being delayed if it is, I cannot afford an xbox 360 or pc upgrades anytime soon

It really does not make much sence for them to delay Oblivion for two main reasons:

1) They will lose a ton of profits by not having it availible AT Xbox 360 launch.

2) Unless it is something that is fundamentally wrong with they way they made the game, patches will fix any problems. I personally would not object to them releasing Oblivion, knowing full well there are some things about the game that need to be patched.

-just my thoughts


* check out the release date at amazon though *

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detai...g=UTF8&v=glance

I for one, Hope They delay it. I convinced my parents to buy me one really high end component of my new Dream machine every 2-4 weeks, by the time Oblivion is to supposed to come out, my Monster machine should be fully operational.


If it comes out this month.......well then its my benafactors choice.

You guys don't seem to realize...

Take Two has announced they will be delaying it. Bethsoft is publishing it in the States. You live in the states, or anywhere Bethsoft is publishing it,k and the release date is still Holidays '05.

oh... well that changes everything....

so take two is publishing everywhere else except the states?

im confuzzled.

I don't know, but like I said, I wont buy it right as it comes out... unless it is the collectors edition. Well then thats a different story. *nods vigorously*

Oh my word, I must say people on the Official Forums are getting rather mad.. Hmm

This does suck, however I want to be optimistic...

Take-Two is publishing it in the UK.

Ah well, I guess I'll stop having these weird day dreams and scary nightmares about the gates of oblivion for a few more months :sigh:

I would be most disappointed if it was delayed, however, I also understand that it takes a serious problem in order for them to make a decision like that.

That said.. this situation as I understand it is:

Take 2 (the games international distributor) has listed Oblivions launch in its second quarter projections instead of its first quarter. This would put the release between Feb-April 2006. They made this decision however because bethsoft told them they were still tweaking the game and wouldn't make the original projected launch.


We havent yet heard from Bethsoft if the Holidays '05 release date has been changed, so I am still inclined to think it will make a Holiday release at least here in the states. Holidays combined with being among only a handful of games for the new 360 would make delays really costly.

I just wish Beth would release some sort of statement to settle some of the grumblings and speculations.

edit: actually now that I think about it... perhaps the silence by Bethsoft is a good thing. Perhaps they are all gathered in meetings now to determine whether or not a US or perhaps a split PC/xbox release is feasible(if that is the cause).

Either way, who really cares. When it comes out it comes out.....

Oh pirates. I was hoping to get Oblivion for Christmas, though if it means a better game, I shall have to wait...but wouldn't Bethesda announce it?

^Why do I insist on being optimistic about a statemant being false? I'm mad. X)

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...

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:

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 ).

damn, so close to oblivion and they pushed it back...

this can only mean one thing: SOMEONE MUST DIE.

they want some extra time? no problem with that. there are plenty of other games to play till then.

Let me jump right in here and tell you what I know (it's not a lot more than you do, though):

My personal opinion from all evidence I have seen is that, if the game is deleayed, it will be delayed worldwide and released worldwide. I see a slight, but really slight chance that in this case the PC version might be out sooner, but I have to admit that the evidence speaking for it is much slimmer than the evidence speaking against it. It could be out earlier if the problems that led to the alledged delay are Xbox related (framerates), but as they are actively seeking for more intern QA people since October 25th, I think the problems might be more general.

Do I think that the announced delay will be true? Yes. The only thing that bothers me is the silence on Bethesda's side. Nobody really can tell why it is the way it is - for legal reasons, something very trivial? No idea.

Funny thing is that material facts point to a delay: the lack of recent videos or screenshots, the lack of information lately and so on. Their words, however, point to a timely release: 99% done, tweaking and testing since summer, still on track...

For someone outside, it's really hard to tell what is true, what is wrong, what is wishful thinking on ones own side. Even the mail I received from Pete Hines after we published the T2 statement on RPGDot (I asked Pete to comment and correct the newsbit if necessary, and told him that we usually would quote the release date from Bethesda's site, but a statement from their co-publisher, especially in a financial report, had some weight for us) wasn't helpful in clarifying the situation. I don't quote PM's I receive for obvious reasons, but the general tone was that he considered something from T2's financial report as newsworthy as well, and that there would be a statement of some sort from Bethesda soon, but not at the time given.

If I had to speculate, I would consider a disagreement between Bethesda and T2 over the actual timeframe for the release a possibility, but without any proof for that speculation. It could well be that Bethesda needs some more time to finish the game, but not as much as T2 reported. It could be that T2 surprised Bethesda with the release date they announced, at least this COULD be a reason why Bethesda didn't act until now. On the other hand, they are not really known to be fast with news and actually are happy that they didn't have to announce the delay themselves. I just don't know, I am just telling you what I think might have happened.

On the official forums, a moderator stated that we could probably expect a reaction from Bethesda before the 7th of November - and I do not know the significance of that date for a statement. Could be that this is the last day before they have to submit Oblivion to the QA of Microsoft to be a day one release title, could be that there is a contract of some kind that doesn't allow them to announce something before the 7th - no idea. I just wanted to show that there are many unexplained components to this matter, and all we can do in the situation now is maing more or less educated guesses.

You can be sure that we will monitor this development closely at RPGDot, and if there is something to report that is more than just a rumor (that means we can confirm the story from at least one other independent and reliable source), it will be posted in our news as soon as possible.

Thanks for taking the time reading this :-)

And thank you for summarizing the musings and information gleaned from the 6000+ posts in the "official release date" thread and descendants.

I've taken to just having Pete's profile in a browser tab, and refreshing it every now and then to see if he's logged on. He hasn't been on since Nov 1st. I figure that if anyone is going to announce anything official, it'll be Pete. Sometimes I poke my nose into the "official release date" thread, but it goes so fast and there's so little actual information or insightful speculation (although there has been some) it's not really worth wading through all of it.

My Eb games has said that the offical release date for them is December 5, 2005. So I dont know about gamespot and all those other unreliable sources but if the person giving me the game says that I will be receving my game on that date than I am going to believe him.



Victory favors netiher the righteous nor the wicked, it favors the prepared.

Official release date according to the Oblivion FAQ as of now: Early 2006.

Edit: Ok, now they completely removed the release date from the FAQ. Guess we'll just have to wait and see what will happen.

Edit2: Seems like it's back again. "Eearly 2006".

uh oh ... not good. i hope we get a statement from beth soon!

Oh lord, how'd you come across this avatar my friend?

Its gonna come out early 2006, I don't think there needs to be more speculation..

Glad for the extra time. They might tune up some of the things I thought were rather... confusing.

I'm kinda gald it's been pushed back. For one It's only pushed back 2-3 months, I've suffered through much worse (for instince, Fable, which was pushed back 2-3 years). Also due to current money situations, I probably wouldn't be able to get it 'til spring any way.

what happened there? did the design team die?

i guess i can wait a few more months for ob but they better release some news or i'm gonna go crazy!!!

*checks the official site*

i think i might cry..

Ps I'm reading it now
http://www.elderscrolls.com/forums/index.p...howtopic=185378

I hope to god that this will quell the mob that is the TES community.. But it is nice to hear from the people actually at Beth..

Oh yea, isn't Pete the one that had a mini breakdown on the forums? If it was he does need to realize that they(Beth or whoever else) isn't giving away this game for free. So when you say one thing, and someting else happens you shouldn't get pissed at the community for being upset.. Thats what a PR person supposed to be handling..

If you're referring to this post, which I'll quote here:

then I think some people have imputed emotions to it that aren't neccessarily there. He sounded to me, when I first read it, like he was slightly annoyed, but arguing clear-headedly and rationally, and his "we'll have to see" just meant "I'm not promising anything specific after this week" (which is fair, since they rarely promise anything in advance any week).

In the light of Bethesda's silence for so long after the Take2 announcement, some people started interpreting it as Pete saying he was packing up his bat and ball and going home. But I don't think that's the only interpretation of what he said, or even a particularly likely one.

Yeah, well, Peter Molyneux (or however you spell it) was trying to make the perfect RPG, and let's just say it took a bit longer than they expected (they actually started on it before the xbob was released and made it on to shelves last fall).

I love the selfish replies of "I won't be able to get it this month so I don't care if everyone else has to wait."

I can see no conceivable excuse for delaying a game we've been told was essentially finished for months.

so you don't mind suffering as long as others are too?

@_fool, I think the "I love" bit was sarcasm

@Hrafnkel, software development can be like that. You've got all the features in, it's all going swimmingly, and then someone on your QA team does something none of the developers or designers ever thought of (but once pointed out you can anticipate a decent fraction of all players doing) which uncovers new bugs, or even just breaks the balance of the game.

Alternatively, it could be related to preformance and/or FPS. It's usually best to get software more-or-less finished, trying to be efficient in general of course, but not spending ages optimising for performance until you can run some profiling tools over your otherwise finished code and find the true bottlenecks. It's very easy to convince yourself that this big ugly algorithm must be the cause of poor performance, and spend ages re-writing it to get it perfect, when a profiling tool will show you that the code actually spends the most time in some small underlying function that's used everywhere and was written at the outset of the project in a quick-and-dirty fashion to get something running, and then never re-examined.

Anyway, look on the bright side: waiting4oblivion can keep its name for a few months longer

Morrowind was actually "delayed" several times in its development. I believe it was started in '96. While it wasnt officially delayed because Bethesda used the same release date strategy then(which I think works quite well). Morrowind had to be constantly rewritten for new Windows platforms that kept coming out. GPU technology was also advancing faster than they had anticipated and of course they were working with a much smaller budget then too. While I havent touched a console since the original nintendo and dont ever intend to get one again.... I have to say I was really happy Morrowind was ported to the xbox. It provided a much larger budget for Oblivion with a much shorter development time. So in fact the wait for me has been very little... the 6 year wait between daggerfall/morrowind down to only a 3 year wait for Oblivion.

Besides that.. Not getting a buggy game to me is worth more time if they need it. I just bought Civ4 a week or so ago and have been playing it and modding it extensively since then... but it came packaged with LOTS of bugs that should have been squashed prior to release. When I first installed it... it didnt even run... I had to copy two .dll files from c:\windows to install directory manually before it would start. I was the lucky one.... Many people with ATI cards are having crash after crash. I do have a memory leak that makes the game slowly lose performance until it crashes. It is an awesome game, but it could have used a month or two more in the oven I think. So hopefully all will be well with Oblivion when we get it.

Now I am off to finish conquering the world!!

I Agree with Neela, I couldn’t imagine having that kind of enduring patience. And people are complaining because of a 3 month wait, I'm apart of the half life community, so I know what im talking about when I say 3 months is hardly anything to wait. Besides, theres a plethora of good games coming out soon

Gun
Perfect Dark Zero
Quake IV
Alan Wake
The Movies
Call of duty 2
Battlefield 2: Special Forces
Marc Ecko's Getting Up: Contents Under Pressure

Look more up!
plenty of games in the mean time, and the new consoles to boot, its a good season for gaming.

Why Oblivion is delayed is undisclosed, and I think it will stay this way, because most probably it is a mix of several things:

My very personal opinion is that the technical problems are with the Xbox version of the game, not the PC version. Microsoft shipped the dev kits one month late, and porting the game to the actual hardware of the Xbox certainly isn't a trivial thing. It has a lot of graphics power, but it is on the lower side of memory and processing power (and Oblivion will be processor heavy for sure).

The most plausible reason for a delay I can imagine is that this game needs a lot of balancing regarding the economic aspects of Oblivion. If you remember, the economics in Morrowind were broken beyond believe. You made money extremely fast, and the unprotected loot got way too powerful with the middle player levels. In his posting, Pete said that they have playtested Oblivion much more than any other previous game, and earlier on he once statet that the devs have spreadsheets galore to balance the game as good as possible.

I don't think they have any showstopping bugs in there anymore, just a lack of finetuning - which would mean an essential flaw.

And when is "early 2006"? All I know is that January is a bad month for a major release, and I doubt that Bethesda and T2 would release the game then even if it is finished. Instead, they will put the extra time into the game and refine it even more.

people are starting to really over-analyze a simple little delay. Its just fixing some bugs, try having the game being delayed like this for another year for seemingly no reason.

I agree that the reason will remain undisclosed, I don't think anyone doubts that. They certainly haven't told us anything else.

As for the other great games coming out, I can think of Gun and CoD2. I'm just assuming that The Movies will be disappointing because of who's developing it.