Oh I know what's happened....

http://www.eurogamer.net/article.php?article_id=76...

Kudos here to Free Radical / Ubisoft here, they've sold someone at Sony way down the river. The game was scheduled for Autumn which puts it on a collision course with another FPS on a certain platform. Funny how there were no rumours of this last week isn't it?

So to save their game being buried by the monalith that is Halo 3, they've gotten Sony to pay for their sales shortfall instead by offering them a "cheap" third party exclusive!

Supposedly they were expecting Halo 3 to ship November (should have been reading those tea leaves lads) so fast work to turn it around in a week. Whether it's timed or even a smart move from their point of view remains to be seen.

Amusing that having had a cheeky dig at Halo in Edge this month they are displaying a reluctance to compete with it!

It would make sense to be timed exclusive though. If anyone has played TS2 they know that the gameplay is rich, especially MP. Further, the recent video shows that the game is drop dead gorgeous. Like a mini-Crysis.

As for the reluctance to compete with Halo... come on. Halo already had MILLIONS of pre-orders before any gameplay was shown. How do you compete against the 4th best selling home console franchise last generation (behind GTA, GT, and Madden), which has a mountain of hype, exclusive E3 time, and massive 1st party support? the advert campaign alone for Halo 3 may be larger than FreeRadicals dev budget. And Haze has to sit inline behind Ubi's own internal IPs -- Splinter Cell & Assassin's Creed.

There is no reason for Ubisoft to release Haze head-to-head against Halo 3. Even if it were better and had better critical response (the first TS games did very well critically) it STILL would be lost. Heck, games like HL2 and UT3 are in danger of getting lost in the Halo/GTA flood.

I know Halo fans would love to see this as Free Radical stepping down, but it is Ubi's call. As Starbreeze said over a year ago: The PS3 is important to them. Why? Less competition in general and they don't have to scale the Halo-Mania-Mountian. On the PS3 they have a chance to be a killer app and be the PS3's "new Halo/GTA" whereas on the 360, face the facts, anything that is a FPS will always be "another Halo". Fans won't it be much more than that. That is the problem with having a title dominate a platform. See all the problems on Ninny's platforms when trying to compete with Nintendo. Fans eat Mario, Link, and Samus alive.

And I wouldn't count out Free Radical (Haze), Infinity Ward (Call of Dity 4), DICE (Battlefield Bad Company), Epic (Unreal Tournament 3), Valve (Half-Life 2, Episode 2, Portal, Team Fortess 2), Star Breeze Studios (The Darkness), or GearBox (Brother In Arms 3 Hell's Highway) in terms of, "Who will make the best FPS in 2007?"

It isn't a forgone conclusion that Halo 3 will be the best FPS this year. It is only a forgone conclusion it will be the best selling.

Oh no I agree it totally makes sense. No point having a good game buried by a monster like Halo 3 and from what I've seen of Haze, it looks good. I respect Free Radical's pedigree and it's piqued my interest but there is no way in hell I'd buy it 3 months either side of Halo 3.

I just found the timing of it all quietly amusing :D