Red Dead Redemption delayed – pick your reasoning

Rockstar’s sandboxed wild west title, Red Dead Redemption, has been delayed, again. Originally slated to drop late in April, the successor to 2004′s Red Dead Revolver will now hit US store shelves on May 18. Funny thing is, we’re hearing two different reasons for this delay from two different sources.

When news originally broke yesterday, publisher Take-Two’s CEO Ben Feder had this to say: “We shifted the launch of the game by several weeks into the third quarter. We believe this is the optimal time frame to release what is being hailed as the next generation of sandbox games.” As Kotaku points out, however, developer Rockstar had a different take on the delay:

“We at Rockstar have always prided ourselves on the uncompromising quality of our games – and will always opt to take a bit longer to polish and fine-tune a game to be as perfect as possible when we think it necessary. With Red Dead Redemption, we felt that these extra few weeks will make a big difference in helping us deliver you an experience beyond your expectations.”

Who do we believe? Rockstar. All you have to do is look at the consistently high level of quality of their products to see their credibility. Furthermore, I can spot a canned CEO quote scripted by a PR person from a mile away. Trust me, I’ve canned up plenty of them myself.

I’m disappointed to hear this – I’ve been pretty psyched for this game for awhile now. But, to be honest, it’s only a delay of a few weeks and Rockstar appears to be doing their due diligence in making sure this game hits the required level of quality. I can’t really complain about that.

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