SEGA and Gearbox released this new “Suspense” trailer today for Aliens: Colonial Marines as well as the following message from Gearbox President and CEO Randy Pitchford announcing the new release date for the video game:
Today, I’m very excited to announce that, for the first time ever, Aliens: Colonial Marines has a specific release date.
But before I get to that, I want to say a few words about the path that brought us here to this moment.
It’s been over thirty years since Ridley Scott’s original film Alien was released to theaters by 20th Century Fox.
In that time, the film series inspired a generation. We can see all around us the clear and profound impact the films have had on our popular culture and our collective image of science fiction. With the anticipation of Scott’s upcoming film, Prometheus, it’s clear the fascination with the Alien universe persists to this day and is stronger than ever.
Our vision has been to create a video game sequel to the original Alien trilogy. Our vision is for the game to be fully featured with an exciting, suspenseful, thrilling and action packed narrative campaign that can be played alone or cooperatively combined with a robust competitive game where human players can take on the roles of Colonial Marines or Xenomorphs and do battle online. The game must be authentic.
It must complement, but not re-tell the events of, the films. It must deliver an original story and fresh experience that, for those of us who grew up loving the Aliens films, builds and expands upon those events, but also stand on its own for those of us who may never have seen the movies.
At the beginning of this effort a few years ago, as the business was in place to allow for the effort, everyone was excited. 20th Century Fox and Sega immediately shared the news with a press release that announced that Gearbox would be making a game in the franchise with these goals in mind. Later, the game was revealed with details and a title, Aliens: Colonial Marines, on the cover of Game Informer magazine. At that moment, we had finished our prototypes and were eager to test our promise against fans and then set real production in motion.
We’ve remained true to our vision. We’ve been committed to it, through and through. We’ve always prioritized the goals we had for the game over any particular launch window. The game’s development has been invigorating and natural relative to our experience making games and the objectives for it. Because the game was “announced” with that original press release, it might feel, to those of you who have been waiting for the game since then, that it has been in development a long time. In fact, with the release date now set, it turns out that the total development time we have spent creating Aliens: Colonial Marines is about the same length of time as we had spent creating the original Borderlands or the original Brothers in Arms – both games that we had waited to announce until we were much farther along in the development process.
If you have had that feeling that you’ve been waiting a long time, then today should be a good day for you! We have an official, solid launch date for the game! We’re now at a point in development when we can see the end – we know what’s left to do and can sufficiently quantify it to be very confident in the schedule for the game’s completion and commercial release!
Today, we’re naming a date!
Aliens: Colonial Marines will launch on February 12, 2013 worldwide.
We’re very excited to finally have a firm date, and we can’t wait for you to step into the boots of a Colonial Marine and kick some ass!
Stay frosty.
Randy Pitchford
Gearbox Software CEO and President
