Shacknews reports that Pandemic Studios' action-packed Venezuela-wrecking shooter, Mercenaries 2: World in Flames, has been struck with another delay, this one sending it careening into publisher EA's 2009 fiscal year. Though the game "is likely to ship this year," the official release period now stretches from April 2008 to March 2009.

The news follows several rumors which suggested that EA would show gamers no Mercenaries until August. We'll let you know as soon as official release date debris details come hurtling through our office window.

Electronic Arts has dropped a cold, emotionless reminder of its late-2007 acquisition of both BioWare and Pandemic Studios, announcing that the pair have now been officially digested by the EA collective. While we remain cynical of the whole affair – it is, after all, what we do – EA has announced that the pair has been tapped to create a whopping ten new franchises for EA, based on six different "wholly-owned" properties. 10? Seriously? BioWare alone hasn't touched that much code in nearly a decade, though to be fair EA hasn't laid out a time line for how often these games will emerge.

Both BioWare and Pandemic will be overseen by EA Games' top cheese Locutus...erm, Frank Gibeau, and according to the executive the acquisition will broaden EA's game portfolio in the RPG, action and adventure genres. A cloud of mystery continues to hang over the bulk of these new projects, though EA has confirmed that BioWare remains hard at work on Dragon Age and the DS Sonic RPG, while Pandemic is chugging along developing Mercenaries 2: World in Flames and Saboteur. At least it seems as though the assimilation hasn't freed the developers of independent thought, though granted it does take some time before the implants take hold.

Pandemic put together a small set of viral videos promoting its mercifully delayed Mercenaries 2: World in Flames. The mockumentary is The Office-esque and follows the exploits of Jim Holston, a "real" mercenary who visits the Pandemic studios to "check out the game."

There is no Mercenaries 2 gameplay footage or launch announcement in the videos that we can see, the first episode is above with the other three found after the break. If you like cringe-humor created by awkward situations then you may find a few moments of laugh-out-loud humor in the videos. We'll never view motion capture technology the same way again after seeing what Holston does to the Pandemic receptionist.

Pandemic Studios is ready to explain why Mercenaries 2: World in Flames was delayed until 2008. In an IGN interview, Pandemic pres. Josh Resnick says they delayed the game so that "every corner of our vast, open-world, highly explosive gameplay is completely polished." He says they are not adding anything else to the game but are merely fixing bugs "to make gamers proud that they own a copy of Mercenaries 2 by making the highest quality next-gen open-world experience the world has ever seen." Well, hopefully Pandemic can own that title for a while before GTA IV comes out around the same time.

Did the multi-platform development cause the delay? Resnick says , "Not at all." He says that all the different version are "shaping up nicely." He also says that the delay has not affected the development of Saboteur and it's still planned for 2008. There's a lot of fluff in the interview, but at least the developers have spoken on the issue instead of just letting the fanboys blame the PS3 for every game with multi-platform development.

We should really start marking every delay with a "happy delay" or "sad delay". Mercenaries 2: World in Flames being pushed to 2008 is a happy delay. We've already discovered that this holiday season is already so disgustingly jam-packed with games that we'll take any delays we can get -- unless it's something major we can no longer wait for. Merc 2, not so major, gives them time to polish -- happy delay.

EA hasn't given an official reason for the delay, that's fine. Add some more explosions, get the AI working properly -- whatever, take your time Pandemic, no rush. The game is expected for PC, Xbox 360, PS3 and PS2. As long as Mercenaries 2 brings the destruction of the first one back with more polish, it'll be a nice mindless title of joy in the vein of Crackdown to get us through early '08.

Pandemic describes Mercenaries 2 as "Bruckheimer meets Tarantino," drawing a distinction between its sequel and the narratively drab original. Mercs 2 is "sexy" and campy, and wildly destructive. "I'm just hooked on the destruction!" shouted a developer into a Canadian cameraman's lens. Bridges and building burst into flames and debris (and then respawn later), only to be demolished again.

Much like Burnout Paradise, Mercs 2 is played in a virtual sandbox that feels lonesome, even boring without the company of a human co-player. Luckily, Pandemic will include full co-op support (though unlike the E3 Burnout preview, this feature was not on display). Without the promised structure of a hearty narrative and "three-dimensional" characters, our demo felt like long stretches of the first Mercenaries game, as we leveled structures and mowed down unsophisticated AI combatants with little purpose.

The danger of many open-world titles is the possibility of wondering off onto redundant tangents that don't offer much to discover, just more to destroy. Ironically, as much ballooned, generic action as Mercs 2 provides, it feels like a niche game. A fun buddy romp for sure, but Mercs has now slid out to the peripheral of our radar, no longer a must-look-for during this year's rich holiday season.

Note: Xbox 360 box art is used above to reflect that Pandemic and EA are currently previewing Mercenaries 2 on Xbox 360 only.

Like a long-lost lover seen in our periphery as they board a train to Paris, our dream of teabagging a friend's corpse right after we call an air strike on them continues to flit just out of our reach. Its latest elusion: The exclusion of competitive multiplayer from Mercenaries 2.

Do we take some comfort in the dozens of new weapons mentioned in the Eurogamer interview? The addition of boats? The hundreds of other new vehicles? Sure, some. But it's a cold comfort. And yes, we can already hear you now: "There's cooperative multiplayer, can't you air strike/teabag that way? Isn't that the same?" But that's obviously different. How can you teabag someone without a victory? It's just ... hollow.

[Via Xbox 360 Fanboy]

The political group's concerns arise from the fact that the "extremely realistic" game allows players to shoot and otherwise demolish people and constructions within the recognizable borders of Venezuela. Their paranoid plea frantically plucks nebulous studies ("research demonstrates that playing violent video games increases the likelihood of aggressive behavior"), bizarre gamer hostility ("the game inevitably will provoke increased tensions between the U.S. and Venezuela) and unfounded fiction fear ("celebration of violence in much of our media, music and video games is poisoning our children") from the air, shortly before rolling everything into a moist ball and splattering it across Bono's front door.

In other news, both Sony's David Jaffe and Cory Barlog have been asked to stop their rampage against Greece's tourism industry. "We're not all half-naked barbarians and bloodthirsty minotaurs, you know!"

[Via Gamesindustry.biz]

As to why they abstained from announcing the Microsoft iteration for so long, Pandemic CEO Andrew Goldman told us it was "just the way we did it." As for future plans and exclusivity, Goldman said that there is one IP they have right now that may go exclusive and will be announced "pretty soon."

Why was it such a big secret? That's about the only question Pandemic senior producer Jonathan Zamkoff wasn't asked in a lengthy Mercenaries 2 tell-all hosted by IGN. Rumblings, reports, and recordings were the evidence leading up to today's confession: Mercs 2 is on Xbox 360 -- and oh, by the way, PC and PlayStation 2. "So here's the scoop. We are shooting for true feature parity on the PS3, 360, and PC. There will be small visual differences on those consoles due to platform specific texture compression algorithms and other platform-specific graphics implementation, but to the end-user the game experience will be nearly identical," explained Zamkoff. "For the PS2 we are taking a different tact. We're working extremely closely with Pi studios ... They are using the Mercs 1 core engine and toolchain, coupled with modified Mercs 2 assets to create the Mercs 2 PS2 version."

The big addition to Mercs 2 is online co-op, which will be nixed from the PS2 version, but intact on PS3. "We have no intention to provide one feature for one system that the other one doesn't have. So, yes, both [Xbox 360 & PS3] will have cooperative multiplayer -- online cooperative multiplayer," confirmed Zamkoff, adding, "We started from scratch to program for the multiprocessors on both machines. They were both in mind when we were writing the text, so we didn't want to create a PS3 engine, which was and has been, and is, our lead SKU, but we didn't want to ignore the Xbox 360. Even though we're just now announcing the 360 version, we have been working on it for quite some time ... In terms of timing, both games are within a week of each other in development." Pandemic is tentatively set on a fall 2007 release.

How long was Pandemic's Mercenaries 2 to press on without a publisher? After LucasArts tapped out following a promising first round, it looked as if the BioWare-Pandemic conglomerate might go it alone, but then, from above, a bulging mass cast its thick shadow over the bustling Los Angeles studio. Megapublisher EA had arrived. It was time.

Pandemic has announced that EA will publish Mercenaries 2 through its EA Partners program. The game has been tossed into a tentative holiday 2007 release window and remains confirmed for PlayStation 3 only -- despite a growing archive of evidence that suggests otherwise.

Pandemic won't come out and say it -- but the tape displayed it. And now IGN has inflated it. "It" being the rumor that Mercenaries 2 is also being developed for Xbox 360 (the game's already confirmed for PlayStation 3). Are we still calling this a rumor?

At the end of its roundtable discussion with Pandemic, IGN posted the obligatory plug for the developer's forthcoming game, originally writing (as captured by Xbox 360 Fanboy), "Keep an eye out for their next release, Mercenaries 2, coming to Xbox 360 and PS3, as well as some cool announcements in the coming months." IGN has since revised that sentence to read: "Keep an eye out for their next release, Mercenaries 2, as well as some cool announcements in the coming months." So was the original posting a typo? Or had IGN accidentally blown the lid off one of those "cool announcements"?

Either the developers of Mercenaries 2 play a lot of Xbox 360 in their downtime, or Pandemic is bringing its sandbox sequel to Microsoft's console. The chances are strong, even by admission, but Mercs 2 remains exclusively tied to PlayStation 3 -- for now. So guys, care to explain all the 360 equipment cluttering the office in your latest video blog? Perhaps it's time for the official announcement...

[Via GamersReports]

In a recent conversation with IGN, Pandemic spoke about the possibility of Mercenaries 2: World in Flames coming to Xbox 360. "Right now, we have PS3 development kits and it's on PS3, and there is no announcement, but we're definitely considering Xbox 360. There is still a lot of time and we haven't ruled the Xbox 360 out," a representative told IGN.

Interestingly, Pandemic still has not secured a publisher for its sandbox sequel. Perhaps the asking price (for publishing rights) is too high for an IP that Pandemic will continue to own and a game that -- for the time being -- is only destined for one platform. Expect an official announcement in the coming months.