3D Realms has learned a valuable lesson today: Never tell exclusive details to newspaper journalists. In an e-mail exchange between the president of 3D Realms, Scott Miller, and the Dallas Business Journal, it was revealed that Duke Nukem Forever is planned to come out towards the end of this year. Miller is targeting the PC, PS3, and Xbox 360 to release DNF on:
“We can’t make an official announcement. Frankly, we may miss the mark by a month or two, but I feel very confident that we’re on target this time. Its definitely an internal push.”
Miller also revealed that Duke Nukem 3D will be coming to Xbox Live Arcade sometime this year. It will offer online multiplayer, co-op and Achievements. There’s a little more to this story so hit the jump for the rest.
Now you’re probably wondering why I said 3d Realms learned a valuable lesson earlier, right? Well, Miller didn’t think that the Dallas Journal was actually going to run what he had told them. They apparently were not used to dealing with mainstream press so they have issued a statement in regards to this whole situation:
In what appears to be an unfortunate turn of events, there seems to have been some confusion between what was ‘off the record’ and what was not. I suppose we’re used to dealing with gaming press and not mainstream press. Lesson learned.
While we have internal targets, dates and goals, like every developer, we are not ready to share them. What’s amazing about this is that the DBJ must have assumed that we’d actually announce a date to them, and not gaming press, and that even in the light of Scott’s quote of “We can’t make an official announcement.”, the DBJ effectively did that. Lesson learned.
The release date is still ‘when it’s done’, and will be until the appropriate moment. Platforms have not been finalized or announced. You can rest assured that we are moving toward a goal and that the recently released teaser trailer is the start of that process and seeing more of the game, sooner than later.
We apologize to gamers and websites everywhere for this series of events. Sometimes, you can be too trusting of people and assume things that come back to bite you. Lesson learned.
Don’t read too much into this. Everything Scott had said to the Dallas Journal is true and they really want the game to come out this year. They just regret spilling the details to this publication instead of gaming publication.
So there you have it. 2008 is the year everyone is going to shit bricks. Maybe. Probably. Hopefully.
[Thanks to Madninja for the first half of this tip!]
