Alone In the Dark reboot delayed to avoid October games rush

Another survival horror has moved its release date in order to avoid competing with Spider-Man 2 and Super Mario Bros. Wonder.

If there’s any real thought that goes into how publishers pick the release dates for their games it rarely shows. But this year, finally, some of them seem to be learning that, maybe, it’s not a good idea for every major Christmas title to release at exactly the same time.

Originally, games including Assassin’s Creed Mirage, Sonic Superstars, Super Mario Bros. Wonder, Marvel’s Spider-Man 2, Alone In The Dark, and Alan Wake 2 were all due to come out within the same two week period, despite the fact that there’s almost nothing out in November except Call Of Duty.

Assassin’s Creed was the first to see sense and will now launch earlier in November. Alan Wake 2 has also moved, but only slightly to October 27. That put it just two days after fellow survival horror Alone In The Dark, which has now moved its release date to January 16.

Considering how little has been seen of the game so far, it seemed like it might get delayed anyway, but the cold winter months of January still seem perfectly appropriate for it.

The game is a new reboot of the original survival horror game, from which Resident Evil borrowed so much, and while there’s little to judge it by so far, we were encouraged to find that the writer of the excellent Amnesia: The Dark Descent and SOMA is working on it.

Hopefully the new release date will offer more chances to see it in action before launch, as it now comes out two days before Prince Of Persia: The Lost Crown.

Late October is still pretty busy, but as you can see it’s not quite as bad as it used to be. The strangest thing is Super Mario Bros. Wonder and Spider-Man 2 coming out on the same day but since they’re both format exclusives, and quite different to each other, it’s unlikely to affect either’s sales.

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