[Puke]

commercial games publicize their release dates to their distributors, retail stores, etc. the info is sent out to magazines, news sites, fan sites, etc. they have a great deal to lose if they miss a date, because the distributors, retail stores, etc. are doing their own advertising and are prepping shelf-space and pressuring the company to get it out on time.

and vast numbers of those games still slip on their dates.

SFI is a relatively small company that does all their own distribution, and only rates a couple slots on the bottom shelves at a few retail outlets. And as far as I know, they only mentioned the relase date (idly, in passing) in one short press blurb.

I think they have almost nothing to lose by letting it slip, as they were probably planing to lead with a steam release and then schedule their shelf space AFTER they had CDs on the way to be mastered and pressed.

So while it would be really great to have a mostly-complete semi-buggy release on target (because then we could all start playing the game while the patches came out), I wouldnt be supprised at all if it slipped a little.