Press Release: GALCIV DELAYED!

[MarkG]

Montreal, Quebec. January 28, 2003

Publisher Strategy First and Developer Stardock announced today that the release date for their upcoming 4X space-based strategy game, Galactic Civilizations, has been updated to March 25, 2003.

The decision to hold back the release of Galactic Civilizations came after the recent delay of Quicksilver/Infogrames Master of Orion 3.

"Gamers have been waiting a long time for the next generation of space based strategy games to arrive. By ensuring that these two games come out at different times, players will have the opportunity to get to know each of them," said Brad Wardell, Project Lead on Galactic Civilizations at Stardock.

"As a result of our close relationship with Infogrames we've been given this unique opportunity that will benefit both of these games and their fans," says Steve Milburn, Director of Marketing for Strategy First. "They are so
different in so many ways that we feel the best thing for fans of this genre is to give them time to enjoy each game on its own."

[Asmodean]

Wardell elaborates

On the GalCiv site (www.galciv.com) Galactic Civilizations project lead, Brad Wardell, has posted this extra info:

For the past few years the strategy genre has been dominated by real time strategy games. Gamers who have been looking for strategy games that focus on depth and empire building have had far fewer options to choose from in recent years.

But in 2003, that's changed. With Masters of Orion 3 (MOO3) and Galactic Civilizations, a new opportunity to demonstrate the viability of turn based strategy games has arisen. Last week, MOO3 went gold which put its release date right near where GalCiv's was planned.

Both games being released at retail at the same time would have harmed sales of both as most gamers can't afford to buy two games at the same time. With both games coming out at different times, it increases the odds of both games having a good retail performance. And Stardock, with its successful commercial software products such as Object Desktop, can afford to keep developing the game during this time.

Stardock plans to use the additional weeks of development time to iron out remaining playability issues, add more polish type features, and add minor features that were originally planned for GalCiv 1.01. Stardock has budgeted several months of development time after release to add new meaningful features to the game based on requests players make.

As a result of this change, there will be a public beta 5 of Galactic Civilizations to existing beta testers. Non-beta testers can pre-order the game from their favorite retailer by clicking on the purchase button.

Of course, I'm very happy with the fact, that BETA 5 is coming.

Asmodean

[The Templar]

AHHHHH! Game developers are killing me! Last semester, Vice City came out a month before exams. Now GalCiv has been moved to about a month before exams. I suppose I could buy MoO3 to get it out of my system, but why?

[Jamski]

They WANT you to fail your exams ! I mucked up the revision for my final college exams playing Civ1, so they (the software firms) have been doing this for years. Uneducated people are more likely to be unemployed. Unemployed people have more time to play big stratagy games like Civ MoO etc. They just want to increase future sales by keeping us out of a job.

-Jam

[BigFurryMonster]

It's a strategic decision: GalCiv =or= exams.
See?
The game has more depth than you realize.

[GodKing]

Good one BFM

[notyoueither]

Damn! I should have sent that beta form in.

Oh well, I have some other important matters to tend to anyways...

[Jamski]

More important than playing games ? WTF ? Give me just one example please.

-Jam

[The Rusty Gamer]

I guess this is all my fault. I had no idea they would actually take me seriously. See here.

[Jamski]

That's it !

I'm getting on the next plane to Kiwi-Land to get you. Never joke with game developers. Remember that they spend all their time out of the real world, which makes it likely that they will follow ANY RL suggestions that sound interesting.

(Incase New Zealambers have an even stranger sense of humour than me, I'm not _really_ angry )

-Jam

[Felch]

Well, it'll give me time to save some money up at least. Hope the extra time goes to good use.

[notyoueither]

Interesting

Just opened up MoO3. Inside is a card advertising Gal Civ with the note it is available March 26. Good move.

Of special interest is that the Infogrames logo appears beside that of Stardock and Strategy First. Very interesting.

[Asmodean]

Yeah...Strategy First is owned by Infogrames.

Asmodean

[notyoueither]

Well there you go. I learn something new today.

[asleepathewheel]

Strategy First is owned by infogrames?

well, that would explain the HOI debacle. Very much the same release procedure of Civ3. Release, then send out patches every few months.