Yesterday we found out that Activision has pushed Soldier of Fortune: Payback back to 2008 in Australia. This flies in the face of the US, which remains full steam ahead for a November launch.
I fired an email off to the publisher for a comment regarding the delay, and their PR has just gotten back to me. Despite the popular belief that it was an OFLC ratings issue (or a typo), the reasons are actually a lot less nefarious – Activision isn’t confident that SoF: Payback will receive its fair share of maketing as the company has quite a few other titles also due for release during the holiday season. And I’m guessing it doesn’t want the game getting lost in the noise. Here’s the full comment:
We decided to move Soldier of Fortune: Payback to early 2008, in order to give the title a more opportunistic launch window. We’re currently working at 110% in getting our Q4 titles to market with the likes of Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare and Guitar Hero 3: Legends of Rock, and therefore moving Soldier of Fortune: Payback puts it in a less cluttered launch window and allows the Activision Australia marketing team to focus the attention to it that it deserves for a successful launch.
We apologies to Australian gamers for the delay.
Thanks for the prompt reply Activision. Bad news if you were desperate to pick this one up, but I can’t imagine that’s many of us.
SoF: Payback Delayed In Oz? [Kotaku Australia]
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