There’s some bad news brewing for the PS3 launch in Europe. No, the date won’t be pushed back again, but some of the premier games that were promised for launch day will be.
So what will be delayed? Ubisoft announced that three of its Tom Clancy titles will be late for launch: Rainbow Six Vegas is now scheduled for release this spring. Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter 2 is coming in June and Splinter Cell: Double Agent will be available next week after the PS3’s debut. Bethesda Softworks will be moving The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion back to an April 27 release, while Vivendi Games says that it won’t be releasing F.E.A.R. until April 20.
Many European gamers are definitely not pleased with the news and believe that it was a conspiracy to conceal what the game publishers already knew — the games were going to be late for launch, but kept it quiet in order to preserve preorders and not upset the PS3 launch. Smiddyman, a user on the GameSpot forums, said, "What are the chances that a few days before the launch of the PS3 all these big name games that people were hoping to buy are suddenly delayed? My bet is they knew they weren’t going to be available and Sony managed to keep them quiet this long."
Of course, others saw it as another insult to the European community. One poster sarcastically remarked, "Surprising of course they will try to screw us Europeans just as much as possible."
