Time flies (like a missile?)

I was just reminded today that the clocks get set forward this weekend in this time zone - a real pity, since I'm going to miss that extra hour of programming time...

The release date is now "official" at May 10th, 2005. (Give or take a few days, of course.) Which means that our 'Gold Master' date for wrapping up development is very close. The manual goes to press early next week (over 150 pages!). The box art is done. The ads are being assembled. And nobody's made coffee yet this morning...

I've posted a few comments recently on our forum about the 'features versus finish' issues - ie what (may) get sacrificed to actually get things out on the shelves. As we've said all along, we will not release a buggy product. We think we have that element wrapped up - no crash issues, no stability issues, no serious operational bugs that we know of.

But what about features? There's always more we can do, but things have shaped up pretty good with all the important features getting in. Some lesser features are on the borderline and may not get in for our '1.0' version - for example, assassinating cabinet ministers is the one I just looked at a few minutes ago. However, we have also made a commitment to continue working on SR2010 after the initial release - we think of this as an epic title that people will continue to play, not a "throwaway" that gathers dust after the game is "solved". We'll continue to listen to players on the forum and look at ways we can improve what we've done.

And in case you missed it, a great preview was just posted on WorthPlaying.com:
http://www.worthplaying.com/article.php?sid=24371&mode=thread&order=0

"...here I was with an incomplete preview build of a game from a company I've never heard of that gripped me with the steely claw of game addiction not felt since the last installment in the Civ series."