Stalker rescheduled for early 2005
It's not slipped, you see, THQ just doesn't want to have to fight off headcrabs, upside down skeleton heads and the Covenant all at once.
Stalker won't be casting any shadows of Chernobyl this year, publisher THQ announced in its latest conference call to investors this week, claiming that the game had been positioned strategically to avoid a head to head fight with the various winter first-person shooters.
"Let's keep Stalker away from that," CEO Brian Farrell told investors, referring to Halo 2, Doom III, Half-Life 2 and their ilk, all of which will probably be clogging up the PC charts later this year, adding that the first three months of 2005 would be the "right window" to launch a new franchise.
"We have strategically scheduled Stalker: Shadow of Chernobyl for PC, Pandemic Studios' Destroy All Humans for PS2 and Xbox, and The Punisher, from internal studio Volition, for PS2 and Xbox for the fiscal fourth quarter," he said in a statement prior to the call, which means Q1 2005 in real terms.
You can read more Stalker in our recent preview from E3, which also cleverly links to other things we've written about it, although you might want to ignore the bit where a THQ exec says "Yes, Stalker is the big one for this Christmas"...