Burning Crusade delayed

News to exactly zero of the people who have ever waited on a game from Blizzard to ship is this release that World of Warcraft: The Burning Crusade has been delayed until January 2007. Over the past 17,000 years, Blizzard has shipped, I believe all of NO games on time. I could be wrong about that, but if any have shipped on time, the number is a sufficiently small percentage of their releases to be considered a statistical sampling anomoly and not an actual indication that Blizzard can ship games at a date in the vicinity of the announced ship dates.

Blizzard Entertainment(r) today announced that the release date for World of Warcraft(r): The Burning Crusade(tm), the highly anticipated expansion for World of Warcraft, will be in January 2007. By adding a few extra weeks to the development cycle beyond its original target date, Blizzard will be able to extend the closed beta test and further refine the new content that will ship with the game.

Oh, and throw in a couple of TMs or Registered trade mark, or some other fancy legal symbols up there in my post. I’m sure someone somewhere might think for just a moment that my posting about the company Blizzard, which has produced mediocre console games, excellent PC games, and a number of vaporware titles over the past 20 or so years, will somehow be mistaken as talk for the company Blizzard which I own or some crap like that. Likewise for the game title – it ain’t my game, so throw in some official looking legalese markers of some sort there. Bleh.

[tags]Oh surprise – Blizzard delays a product launch, Burning Crusade delayed[/tags]

PS3 gets FCC approval

Well, the PS3 has received FCC approval. This means all that stands between you and a PS3 on launch day is, well, having the $2500 it will take to buy one off ebay, since I’m sure you’re not one of the lucky (fewer than) 500,000 in the US who got a pre-order in on time AND who will actually get their pre-ordered product on release day. But at least there isn’t a regulatory issue holding up the product now. (via Kotaku)

[tags]PS3 gets FCC approval, PS3 meets US electronics safety requirements – gets approval for release[/tags]

Next gen console analysis from a normal (-ish) gamer

I don’t have a lot to add to this. Head to Dubious Quality and read what Bill says about the next-generation console shoot-out (that would be XBox360 vs PS3 vs Wii). His is probably the smartest analysis of what will happen I’ve seen. He could be wrong, but given how well he understands the entire gaming industry, I’d place higher odds on his being right than any other analyst or business I’ve read yet.

Okay, let me get this straight. The Wii is going to sell barely more than half the units of the other two consoles even though it’s significantly cheaper and offers an entirely unique control scheme which will encourage developers to be more creative. Oh, and the development costs are much lower.

WTF?

[tags]A look at the next-gen console wars through 2010[/tags]