Aliens: Colonial Marines Now Slated For February, 2013 Release

Colonial Marines was also originally stated for an unspecified fall, 2012 release. Now, with the release of a new trailer, an official release date has finally been announced, and it’s a very familiar tune. Aliens: Colonial Marines will launch on February 12, 2013.

Gearbox CEO Randy Pitchford explained the decision in a statement for the official site. “Our vision has been to create a video game sequel to the original Alien trilogy,” he said. “Our vision is for the game to be fully featured with an exciting, suspenseful, thrilling and action packed narrative campaign that can be played alone or cooperatively combined with a robust competitive game where human players can take on the roles of Colonial Marines or Xenomorphs and do battle online…”

However, Pitchford was careful to clarify that this release date isn’t a delay. “Because the game was “announced” with that original press release,” he continued, “it might feel, to those of you who have been waiting for the game since then, that it has been in development a long time. In fact, with the release date now set, it turns out that the total development time we have spent creating Aliens: Colonial Marines is about the same length of time as we had spent creating the original Borderlands or the original Brothers in Arms – both games that we had waited to announce until we were much farther along in the development process.”

It’s worth noting that this is the third time in less than two weeks that a major game franchise expected for a fall, 2012 release was pushed back into February, 2013 . We take Pitchford at his word, of course, that this was the natural result of the game’s development and not a delay designed to give more time for multiplayer (which, I’ll admit, makes a lot of sense for an Aliens game.) However, other developers should take note: February 2013 is going to be crowded.

Via VGA & Gamefront