Atari announced that it has elected to move the ship date of DRIV3R, the latest installment of the Company's Driver franchise, from the end of March to June 1, 2004.
"The Driver franchise set the benchmark for the driving adventure genre, as the incredible legacy of Driver and Driver 2 has combined to sell more than 12 million units worldwide," said Bruno Bonnell, Chairman and CEO of Atari, Inc. "We believe that this additional time will give our marketing team the ability to exploit DRIV3R's full potential, meeting the high expectations of gamers, media and shareholders," he continued.
It would appear that Atari may have delayed Driv3r in order to pump-up its fiscal 2005 line-up since the company seems to expect a lot from the title. After all they have Unreal Tournament 2004 and Unreal 2: The Awakening for Xbox in fiscal 2004 and those should do the business for them so they can break even.
The driving adventure will be in good company since other Atari games expected around the same time include Transformers, Shadow Ops, Duel Masters, and Sid Meier's Pirates!, as well as new titles from the Dragon Ball Z, Dungeon & Dragons, Terminator, and Backyard Sports franchises. Looking at that line-up it is abvious that Driv3r is the highest profile game there and the delay, it can safely be assumed, is not due to development issues but most probably an attempt to add a prestigious title to a rather needy line-up.
For the time being we will have to wait for the short Riddley Scott Associates promo films in order to keep ourselves busy until the game does launch.