So sad, BioShock sticks with original release date

by Alexander Sliwinski on Aug 15th 2007 8:59PM

For all those hoping that today's glorious mixup by Toys 'R' Us to let BioShock out early would spur 2K to open the street date flood gates – giving you immediate playtime with Mr. Bubbles over there – it's time to give up on those dreams and move on. 2K says they're sticking with their August 21st North American and August 24th European release dates. Hey, if you were an early bird this morning, you may have already gotten your BioShock worm.

The official statement sent to Joystiq by 2K is quite cute, saying, "It recently came to 2K Games' attention that one of our retail partners prematurely sold some copies of BioShock prior to the game's official launch date ... Additionally, a TV advertisement for BioShock prematurely ran that incorrectly indicated that the game was available for purchase ... 2K Games is appreciative of the gamer excitement and critical acclaim leading up to the title's launch." Now if only we could find a way to give people a chance at still getting BioShock early, even if they didn't get over to Toys 'R' Us today. If only ...

Tags: 2K, bioshock, BreakingNews, releasedate, Xbox-360

Reader Comments (52)

This news makes me a sad panda.

Fuck!

LOL....precisely

there screwed. torrents have bioshock already.

yea.. soo?

Yeah, why should the loyal fans who have had this game paid off for months get a chance to play this game before all of the pirates who are ripping torrents off of the net right this very second?

Your "loyal fans" are the ones that put it up on torrents to begin with.

You can still buy it online for $30 if you buy a Madden in the same cart - it'll ship on the 21st. toysrus.com

I never understood why publishers don't just ship & release a game as soon as it goes gold.

Games are shipped and released as soon as they go Glass, not Gold.

I only spent a few months in the QA scene as a tester, but I saw more than one game get pulled from gold and go back to beta because of errors and other serious bugs. Gold is NOT the final build in all cases.

To second Tetra:
I had actually just posted about this a few days ago. "Gold" means Release Candidate 1. There are a lot of issues that can hold back a release candidate. While I'm sure that Bioshock is in none of those boats (no pun intended?), that's why they never seem to ship ahead of schedule... although it would be nice.

to think that those packages are just going to *#($* sit there aLL week!!!!

and weekend...

THis is MAd!!!.. SOMeBody SAVE US!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I would like to blame the Midget cockpunching terrorists for this.

9 days to go then :(.

BTW anyone knows the release date for Naruto x360?.

God this game is sweet and gorgeous. Played the demo the last few days. This will definitely tie me over til Halo 3.

I think it looks better than Halo 3, but that's just me.

He he he he... Got mine today. I love it!!! Had to civily argue with the manager but he caved, good move toys r us. This game is definatly up there on my list of games. As for madden 08... pretty much the same game but still good. Oh and I got the 20% off too with that coupon on toys r us's front page.

Lol, that's just funny because the manager knew he wasn't supposed to sell it to you. In my head the discussion went like this:

Jake - "Come on. Don't be a douchebag."

Manager - "God dammit. Fine."

"Now if only we could find a way to give people a chance at still getting BioShock early, even if they didn't get over to Toys 'R' Us today. If only ..."

You mean like that fact that it's available for download all over the internet?

God damn, I wish they had decided to release it today after the street date was broken, now I have to sit here and listen to my friend with the hacked dvd firmware gloat as he plays his pirated copy all night!Curse you Toys R Us for giving me false hope!

I think Toys R Us didn't sell it early. I think Toys R Us had some kind of deal with 2k to run a special.. first 25 customers.. or 1 hour sale only. I find it hard to believe that all night last night (tuesday night) for several hours the BioShock commercial was on every commercial break on SciFi saying the game was released, with the 360 price cut announcement right after it for a 2 second blip and then suddenly Toys R Us sells multiple copies of the game at multiple stores.

This is more then stupid clerks that don't know anything about video games running the video game department in Toys R Us.

If so then it's the most impressive grass-roots, guerrilla marketing tactics I've ever seen. And stupid money-wise, given that they were selling the game for half price if you bought Madden.

but at least they sold those shitty copies of madden for 60 bucks (or 48 if you printed off the coupon)

It's not like they would have had a hard time selling Madden anyway. It was sold out at some stores on Tuesday.

well as is natural to the xbox crowd .. its already available on most torrent sites .. LMAO .. blu-ray anyone?

"Now if only we could find a way to give people a chance at still getting BioShock early, even if they didn't get over to Toys 'R' Us today. If only ..."

Could this be why Chris G. said that he wiped out a local Toys R Us in Philly earlier today and to not try to get a copy there? Hmmmmm....

If you're willing to give up any of those copies Chris, let me know. ;)

...

Its crazy the only delay 360 games get are to the original date they were set to come out...LOL

Good lord who cares? It's next week... stop freaking out over a "premature launch" that's only 5 days before the normal release date.

That said, I couldn't help buy into the hype and checked the Toys R Us across the street after work today and they laughed me out of the store.

I think the same thing about the release day - who cares - but it was cool to be able to use the Madden deal, which ends this Friday, to buy a new release game for $30.

Madden got brought up, so it is not my fault for throwing my personal anecdote in here.

My work buddy has a PS3 and had to go to four stores to find a copy of Madden 08'. He said each store had plenty Wii and 360 copies, which kinda irritated him. Why is this? I'd almost think the other versions would sell out better. And after all of that, he didn't even open the game because him and his roomate have an MLB Show baseball season to finish off.

Then I told him about the framerate thing and he got sad. Then I told him how awesome the Bioshock demo was and he agreed to help me move next weekend under the condition I let him play it, and 60 frame Madden, for a couple of hours.

Looks like the ol' 360 is paying for itself in favors alone. ;)

That's odd. Wonder if they were stocking fewer copies of the PS3 version because of there being a smaller market for the game? I ran into a couple of friends who said they had to go to several stores to find a 360 copy. I'm happy with the Wii version, myself.

That's exactly why you can't find a copy of the PS3 version. It was expected to sell poorly even before the issues came out about the framerate. To give you some perspective at my store we got 60 copies 360, 12 xbox, 40 wii, 12 gamecube, 12 ds, 144 ps2, 8 PS3. That tells you right there how well it was expected to sell.

Because PS3 is the console for jocks and gangstas, and Madden is all they have to play on the damned thing.

I went to Toys R Us right after work but no go. I'm sure all the stores were alerted to the mix up well before I had a chance to get there. Very disappointed but it's only 6 days to wait.

Damn the demo was great...

I think there should be a psychological study done on the effects of a release date's relative proximity with regards to the perception of the passage of time.

Cause seriously, you wait a year for a game and are fine with it, but the last 5 days before a street date are the longest, most drawn-out, most craze-filled days of that given year.

I know that's the case with a lot of people, but for me it doesn't make much of a difference. The reason being that I never get anything the day it comes out.

Except for NCAA 08, but that's only because I happened to be strolling into a Wal-Mart, looked over at an advertisement and said "Hey, it's the 17th!"

It's okay, I've already got a copy of my own. :)

Judging by how many people came to toys r us to buy it, and the fact that there were only 2 copies left when I got mine, I have to say the game is going to sell like hotcakes. It's going to avenge it's big brother SystemShock 2, for sure.

I would advise anyone thinking about visiting the offical forums not to, at least for a while anyway. There have been a few d*ckheads posting major spoilers all over the place.

If for whatever reason they're dedicated to the 21st, then they'd better not set a trend by giving into a pre-release mistake and breaking the street date. That would set an example for future games where people would purposefully break the street date expecting the publisher to follow suit.

well i guess toys r us won't get 90 bucks outta me...too bad for them

The second they make that transaction they're out $4910, I don't blame the company at all for trying to stop the leak. To you 90 bucks may look tempting, but take into consideration the penalty they'll be slapped with.

That being said I'd gladly give them my 90 and turn away.

do you actually think 2k will take toysrus to court for all of these leaks? it's obviously (as some mentioned in the other thread) a mistake on their part, from not labeling the street date on the shipments. A few isolated cases I could understand, but there must've been at least a thousand copies sold today, or damn near

I went to 3 TRU stores in the morning before a jillion
gajillion people bombarded all the stores with "the question" over the phone and at the store. At each place, and after impromptu verbal dances with immature clerks behind the counter regarding the goods, the main clerk would look me in the eye and confide to me only that they had
not received Bioshock yet and to check again soon, while I watched the expression of optimism and honesty emiting from the guy. BUT!. Since the corporate memo was sent out to the stores to halt Bioshock sales and in the process effectively disenfranchise said title from the Madden promo with frugal game purchasers, what's the point? I'm devastated about not being able acquire Bioshock at the store level for $30 which in turn had led me to early cancellation of my complementary ephoric victory dance outside the store [insert your fav Unreal Tournament victory dance], Bioshock's home reception and subsequent calling in sick before going to bed the next morning. For the time being, the demo will have to suffice until the holidays when Bioshock could be pegged to some
great discount, like Amazon dot com's once in a blue moon insane deals, like the $100 xbox 360 core last November.

I work at retail store and most games do not have a hard street date like dvds, cds, etc.. In fact only the really big releases such as a Madden or a Halo actually have hard streets date regardless of what is actually advertised as the release date. We actually get communications from corporate all the time specifically saying which games we have to hold for their release dates, and are told to sell the rest as soon as they arrive with out fear of fines like one would get from selling a hard street date game like Madden early. And to my knowledge this game does not have an enforced hard street date, but then again after all of this it may now.

Damn this game plays and looks totally awesome...but alas, I'm going to have to go to Metroid Prime 3 this month...does anybody but me hate that maybe 10 of the best 15 games in any year are all packed into the last 4 months? :(

I think it is ridiculous that they just don't release it now. Someone who got it could just make copies and sell them all week. Then everyone that bought a fake wouldn't need to buy the real copy on the 21st. I have a good feeling that the makers of bioshock will lose money this way.

I made sure to let everyone on my friends list who was playing this last night, just how much I hate them.

Is your friend list smaller now?

Nah, they're too busy lording their plasmids and whatnot over us to delete anyone from their lists.

So I went to local Toys R'us and low-behold, the clerk stopped, stared at me and asked "Bioshock? Never heard of it? Is that for the Wii?"
So I put the "Display only" copy of Madden '08 back (no sale here), and walked past the screaming brats near their Milf's at the checkout counter and went home. To play Lost Planet online. Again. Sigh.

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So sad, BioShock sticks with original release date

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