Gears Of War 3 Release Date Delayed

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The final game in the ‘Gears of War’ trilogy, the aptly named Gears of War 3 was heading for a release date in April 2011. Unfortunately for the Gears fans, the game has been delayed to “Holiday 2011″, which is about a year away. Is this bad news for the Gears Of War series?

The announcement was made by Microsoft, who publishes the Epic Games-developed title via their Microsoft Game Studios brand. The Gears Of War series has been a flagship action franchise exclusive to the Xbox 360 console.

Microsoft said in their statement:

The teams at Microsoft Game Studios and Epic Games have done great work thus far readying the title for release in the Spring of 2011. However, we’ve elected to move the launch of Gears of War 3 until Fall 2011 to make it the marquee title for the holiday season.

So, it sounds like that the decision to move Gears 3 back almost 8 months isn’t due to issues in development, but a purely business decision as Microsoft may be seeing a hole in their Holiday 2011 lineup. This actually isn’t totally uncommon in the game industry.

One notable example, this years ‘Alpha Protocol’ was set to be released in early 2010, but another RPG-shooter, Mass Effect 2, came out around the same time, and SEGA delayed the title until June.

Shigeru Miyamoto of Nintendo fame once said, “A late game is late once. A bad game is bad forever.” Of course, that may not apply since it sounds like GoW 3′s delay is a business decision. What do you think? Sound off in the comments section.