Alpha Protocol may be gorgeous, epic and heavily anticipated, but as of this morning, it’s also officially delayed until 2010.
The really weird bit is that this shouldn’t be news to anyone. We already knew the game had been delayed, to the point that The Escapist and many others had reported on it more than a week ago, yet Sega only now decides to confirm our suspicions that this game is not actually on store shelves in some hidden dimension somewhere.
And just what is to blame for this delay? Good question. The official statement out of developer Obsidian Entertainment is so politically milquetoast that it may as well have been written on unleavened bread by Alan Greenspan.
“Alpha Protocol is a new take on the RPG genre and from day one the team has been working to make Alpha Protocol a truly unique game for players to experience,” said Obsidian CEO Feargus Urquhart. “We’re very happy that Sega has made the decision to hold back the shipment of the game in order to give it the best chance at becoming the publishing success that we at Obsidian and our partners at Sega are striving for”.
Maybe a comment from Sega of America COO Masanao Maeda might help shed some light on the delay. “Since the inception of Alpha Protocol, SEGA has recognized the potential for the game to establish itself as an AAA title,” Maeda said. “We’ve worked in conjunction with Obsidian Entertainment in making the decision to move Alpha Protocol’s ship date to spring 2010 to ensure that we have the best game possible at launch.”
Nope. No help there either.
If any of you prospective Alpha Protocol fans find yourselves suddenly worried about this game’s future, we’d like to reassure you, but can’t. This situation grows more mysterious by the day, and the only time developers and publishers prefer mystery over telling their potential customers what’s up is when the product they’re working on is known internally as a horrible mess. We’ve got fingers upon fingers crossed that Alpha Protocol will avoid this fate, but reality is a harsh mistress with a thousand teeth, bony fingers and eyes that shoot bees.
