IG Press release - MOO3 gone gold

[Vince278]

Gooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo oooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo oooold!!!!!
(Think FIFA )

Just in time. I was about ready to cancel my pre-order this weekend.

[Roger the Jolly]

At long last!

Finally!!

Let's go get it!

O.k., I think this about sums my feeling on the subject, excpet for - YIPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPP PPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPY

(And I really really hope this will not be a huge flop after all the expectation).

[Proteus_MST]

Originally posted by Ozymandous
Feb 25 could be the last date they plan to have it everywhere and not just in the US assuming the translations take a few weeks like happened with Civ3.

Translations which take a few weeks?
In which Universe do you live?

Civ 3 took I think half a year til the german version was published.
At least you could buy the US Version right from the start, so it didn´t matter for me.
And this was no Exception but is rather normal for german Versions
Perhaps you remember the legal Issues between Infogrames and Kai Fiebach, who was forbidden by court order to publish a mod which translated large parts of Civ 3 into german.
The official German Version of Civ 3 was then put on the Market in March or April the next year AFAIR.

O.K. but now to really important matters

It is gooold

[Smiffus]

And there was much rejoicing...

[Nightingale]

Yay!

Excellent! Looking forward to buying it!

I guess the big question now is when it will be released here in the northern wastelands of Europe

In any case it's good news, finally the light at the end of the tunnel is there for all to behold

[Gooberman32]

Yippee its gone gold! so how long till its in stores?

[saitir]

Originally posted by GP
1. Why the delay until Feb 25 AT THE EARLIEST to get the game in stores?

2. Does Rantz want to east crow for saying the game would be done WELL before Feb28? 25 is close to 28.

Simple logistics. Going gold is a reference to the CD master that used to have to be created (probably still in some format). So a going gold announcement jsut means they have it in a format to be sent into production. And it was a friday so likely nothing will really happen 'til monday. Then you have the logistics of pressing and packaging a few hundred thousand units and then transporting them so you can have a single release date across the country of your choice. The distribution alone is likely to take a week. So they ought to be able to trot the game out in 2 weeks or so. Thats assuming they didn't have to make last minute changes to manuals (most manuals are printed weeks or months before the game is finished, and usualy last minute changes are small enough that the manual can be amended with online/on disk readme's and updates. However, if the changes made before xmas were as significant as some rumours had it, there may have been heavy reprinitng issues needed. And printing the manuals ain't as quick as pressing the CDs....)

All this can be done faster if you inject enough cash into the problem, but why bother at this stage? From a distributors point of view there're no big spending peaks at this time of the year, so they go with most efficient printing and production costs not just the absolute fastest. If this had been a couple of weeks before xmas the job would likely have been done on the high cost uber fast track, but hey, the pissed us all of this long, why rush now?

[lockstep]

Re: Yay!

Originally posted by Nightingale
I guess the big question now is when it will be released here in the northern wastelands of Europe

Same question here. Hopefully, some stores will import the original US version.

[gunnergoz]

Saitir, where did you get the impression that there were "significant changes" made in the game "before xmas?" I've been closely following the forums here and at QS (as well as assorted other rumor mills) and have not heard of any such changes coming after about late Summer.

True, the Prima guide probably does not reflect the later builds, but it was probably written and went to press last Fall, perhaps September or so, and so reflected late Summer builds.

The only thing I'd picked up about the December delay was the bugs issue, and that was supposedly mostly confined to multiplayer.

Or do you have some insider info you'd like to share?

[TCO]

Originally posted by saitir


Simple logistics. Going gold is a reference to the CD master that used to have to be created (probably still in some format). So a going gold announcement jsut means they have it in a format to be sent into production. And it was a friday so likely nothing will really happen 'til monday. Then you have the logistics of pressing and packaging a few hundred thousand units and then transporting them so you can have a single release date across the country of your choice. The distribution alone is likely to take a week. So they ought to be able to trot the game out in 2 weeks or so. Thats assuming they didn't have to make last minute changes to manuals (most manuals are printed weeks or months before the game is finished, and usualy last minute changes are small enough that the manual can be amended with online/on disk readme's and updates. However, if the changes made before xmas were as significant as some rumours had it, there may have been heavy reprinitng issues needed. And printing the manuals ain't as quick as pressing the CDs....)

All this can be done faster if you inject enough cash into the problem, but why bother at this stage? From a distributors point of view there're no big spending peaks at this time of the year, so they go with most efficient printing and production costs not just the absolute fastest. If this had been a couple of weeks before xmas the job would likely have been done on the high cost uber fast track, but hey, the pissed us all of this long, why rush now?

Yeah...newbie. But Rantz or Chantz said that gold to stores could be done inside a week. He said this in response to people saying that it would be a month from gold to stores a long time ago. I'm responding to that. Try to understand where the conversation has been. You can save some pdeantic posts that way.

[Craig P.]

They said it could. They also said this around the time of the originally scheduled release date, when the skids were already greased at the retailers and IG. All of which makes it not particularly unreasonable that the lead time would be longer.

As saitir said, "All this can be done faster if you inject enough cash into the problem, but why bother at this stage?". I think you were wrong to simply dismiss his post out-of-hand.

[TCO]

Yeah...and they were disingenuous for stressing that it could be less than a month (sometimes heatedly) when it IS going to be a month.

[Kc7mxo]

Yeah...and they were disingenuous for stressing that it could be less than a month (sometimes heatedly) when it IS going to be a month

Yep. I tend to believe in the original press release. The one that said "as early as Feb 25." Its not something QS has any control over, its just up to IG. And they could be under constraints we have idea of.

I am quite dissapointed that it will take so long, and I hope to see it sooner, but oh well. I guess it'll give me more time to work on my compiler and software testing assignments. Though that isn't really a good thing either . . .

[TCO]

How are the AOL boards? Are they still jabbering about Marines on the newbie board?

[Kc7mxo]

Hah hah! Now THAT brings back some memories. Man, its been a while, eh?

I was the last one to leave the old board I think. Shoot, that must have been three years ago! Remember when they cut the main board off and the only way you could get to it was through bookmarks?

How about the evil empire discussion?