Gearbox president Randy Pitchford says the Duke Nukem Forever delay wasn’t planned and isn’t a joke, and is in fact “very difficult and expensive” for the studio.
When I found out yesterday that Duke Nukem Forever had been pushed back into summer, I thought it was the greatest thing ever, not because I’m some kind of jerk but because it was just so deliciously perfect. Okay, maybe I am kind of a jerk, but you have to admit that after 14 years “in development” and countless delays and excuses, it’s pretty damn funny. Unless you’re Randy Pitchford, that is.
“Delay was NOT planned,” he wrote on Twitter. “Very difficult and expensive for us, but the right thing for fans.”
“Delay was unavoidable, even though we tried,” he added. “I’m sorry.”
So what’s left to do after almost a decade and a half in the pipe? “The delay is because of time to finish some things that our predictions were wrong about. Lots of unrevealed details, still,” Pitchford wrote. “It’s finishing and polish – some of our predictions about task completion and difficulty were inaccurate.”
He also noted that the delay did not arise from complaints about the “ass smacking” in the game’s “Capture the Babe” multiplayer mode. “Nothing is getting cut because of the delay,” he wrote. “Some things are getting better, though.”
Gearbox has plans for post-release DLC and will possibly put out some mod tools as well, he said, while information about the status of the demo will be released as soon as possible, hopefully before May. Duke Nukem Forever is now scheduled to come out sometime in mid-summer, barring further unforeseen-yet-perversely-awesome delays, for the PC, Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3.
