Fatal Inertia has become a horribly fitting monicker for all the wrong reasons over the last year. Initially announced as an exclusive PlayStation 3 launch title at last year's Tokyo Game Show, Koei Canada's futuristic racer has been slipping further and faster from Sony's clutches ever since.

Quickly losing its exclusive status to an Xbox 360 conversion announced in November, and also delayed numerous times, first until spring this year, secondly until summer and finally to fall, the game has now sped as far as possible from its original configuration, to all intents and purposes becoming a 360 exclusive. Ironic, no? 

While the 360 version of the game is currently set to ship on September 11th, Koei has announced that the original PS3 version has been "delayed indefinitely", and now lists only the 360 edition on the game's press releases. The reason?

the delay is due to the progress of the game engine for PS3. 

Very strange that the 360 version of the Unreal Engine 3 powered game should have overtaken the original iteration of the title to such a degree, particularly with some developers starting to take a stand against the traditional "PS3 development is harder than fingerless mountain climbing" argument lately. 

Will we eventually see the PS3 version? I'd suspect not for a good while. If the 360 version is only two months away from release while the PS3 is still having problems getting the engine to work, it sounds like we might be looking at some pretty hefty problems, and ones which certainly explain the game's previous delays. Whether the PS3 engine issues were part of the reason for the decision to make a 360 version in the first place can only be answered with pure speculation, but right now a lot of people at Koei must be breathing quite sizeable sighs of relief at the thought of having a back-up. 

As an additional side-note, our resident Dynasty Warriors obsessive Jim has asked me to add his own comments to this story, relating as it does to his favourite developer of button-bashing slash-'em-ups. And his message? Simply this:

KOEEEEII! KOEI! KOEI! KOEI!

Thanks Jim. 

[Thanks to Joe "Yes, me again" Burling]