Fez turns a corner, gets delayed until 2012

Today started off awesome for Fez fans. Fez's creator, Phil Fish, released a long screenshot (which was actually more of a video, but we'll take it), and it looked really cool. And then he had to go and ruin it, mere moments later, by tweeting "(and fez is delayed to early 2012)." The off-handed mention was mistaken for a joke by some, but when asked if he was serious about the delay, he responded that Fez was "so delayed." Well, we guess that settles that.

Fez was originally scheduled to release on Xbox Live Arcade in 2010, two years after winning the "Excellence in Visual Art" award at the Independent Games Festival in 2008. When 2010 came and went, the developer announced that the game would be delayed until 2011. Now, as we approach the dreaded fourth-quarter of 2011, Fez has once again been pushed back, though the developer says that this delay will be shorter than the others. He claims that it will only be one to two months later than normal, which isn’t all that bad – it’s not like we would have had time this year what with gigantic blockbuster games coming out every week from now until December.

Since announcing the delay, Fish has been on the defensive on twitter, explaining the reasons for this one last (hopefully) push. "A DELAYED GAME IS EVENTUALLY GOOD, A BAD GAME IS BAD FOREVER," he said, before explaining that the delay will allow him time to fix more bugs and add more detail. Odds are he'll be continuing his tweet defense for some time now, so you can check out his Twitter page if you want to yell at him. But remember, the more time he spends arguing with fans, the less time he has to work on Fez. In other words: leave him the hell alone, he has work to do!

Sep 29, 2011