Originally scheduled for a November 17th release in North America, the stylized arcade racing of EA's Need for Speed: Nitro will be hitting store shelves a full two weeks earlier than expected - November 3rd in the states and the 6th in Europe. In celebration of the game reaching gold status, EA has released the full soundtrack listing for the game, featuring a mix of tracks from international artists that are sure to get stuck in your head for weeks at a time.

"This soundtrack musically exemplifies the intensity, attitude and adrenaline of Need for Speed NITRO," said Steve Schnur, Worldwide Executive of Music and Music Marketing at EA. "This energetic collection of rock, electronic and hip hop, matches the incredible speed and intensity of a game experience players will never forget."

Check out the full track listing below to see what Mr. Schnur feels exemplifies intensity, attitude, and adrenalin.

Need for Speed: Nitro Soundtrack:

Alex Metric - What Now
Bloody Beetroots feat. Cool Kids - Awesome
Crookers feat. Wiley and Thomas Jules - Business Man
Crystal Method feat. LMFAO - Sine Language
Danko Jones - Code Of The Road
Dizzee Rascal and Armand Van Helden - Bonkers
Drumagik - Make It Rock
Earl Greyhound - Oye Vaya
edIT feat. Wale and Tre' - Freaxxx
Evil 9 - All The Cash (Alex Metric Remix) Feat. El-P
Hollywood Holt - Can't Stop
k-os - FUN!
Lady Sovereign - I Got You Dancing
Major Lazer feat. Mr.Lex & Santigold - Hold The Line
Matt & Kim - Daylight (Troublemaker Remix)
Mickey Factz - Yeah Yeah
Pint Shot Riot - Not Thinking Straight
Placebo - Breathe Under Water
Rise Against - Kotov Syndrome
Roots Manuva - Buff Nuff
Rye Rye - Hardcore Girls
Street Sweeper Social Club - Fight! Smash! Win!
Taking Back Sunday - Lonely Lonely
The Enemy UK - No Time For Tears
The Gay Blades - O Shot (Dmerit Remix)
Two Fingers feat. Sway - Jewels And Gems

At this point, January through March of next year is going to be the biggest first quarter in gaming ever, as an increasing number of games originally slated for fall and holiday 2009 releases get shunted into next year. Capcom dropped us a line to explain the reasoning behind the delay.

Dark Void is moving into Capcom's fiscal Q4 in order to get the game out of the crowded fall game season and to allow the development team more time to polish and enhance the game experience.

One of those two excuses doesn't really hold up, but we'll take a more polished game at a later date over one rushed to market any day of this year or the next.

Yesterday Ubisoft announced the delay of four of their big titles, including Splinter Cell Conviction. The news popped up on the official forums for the game with a statement from Ubisoft Community Developer UbiRazz.

"Splinter Cell Conviction is a very important game for us. We want to ensure it's a game that long-term fans and gamers new to the series equally enjoy when they play it. Previous Splinter Cell games have set the bar very high when it comes to quality and enjoyment, we are firmly focused on continuing this with Conviction.

After demonstrating the new vision for the game at E3 2009 we won many awards and received a lot of interest from fans and press alike. In order to live up to our own ambitions and your expectations, we strongly feel that giving our teams that extra time will allow us to present a game to you that will fulfill that potential. Due to this, we have decided to move the release date into Q1 2010. This extra time will ensure Splinter Cell Conviction becomes every bit the fantastic experience we want it to be.

Keep posting your thoughts and constructive feedback on the game here, we will absolutely continue to read them."

UbiRazz later added that the additional work being done on the game won't result in any major changes.

"Just so you know: there won't be any major changes or additions to what you saw at E3 but there may be minor tweaks/balancing. With this in mind, this thread is largely defunct."

Splinter Cell Conviction delayed until Q1 2010 [Ubisoft Forums]

Maybe this explains why I haven't gotten my review copy yet. Of course, Joystiq points out that VG247 is a UK site, so it's not clear if the delay covers Europe only or if North America is included. Gamestop's showing the drop date as June 2.

FUEL Delayed to June 5 [VG247 via Joystiq]

And that's just what Champions Online developer Cryptic is doing. Originally slated for a July 14th release, the developer is delaying the game until September 1st, in order to "implement certain features".

"It is critically important for an MMO to be as good as it possibly can be at launch. Through our constant dialogue with our vocal and supportive community of beta testers, we quickly realized that in order to implement certain features that we all considered important the development of Champions Online would require more time. So that's what we're going to give it. Cryptic has a proven track record of releasing solid games and we want to maintain that with Champions Online."

So basically, they don't want to release the game until it's finished. Seems fair enough.

Champions Online New Release Date [Champions Online]

In an open letter to Guild Wars fans, O'Brien points out that Guild wars 2 never had a firm release date attached to it, so there really is no delay, as many gaming websites had reported. Furthermore, O'Brian explains that the recent layoffs at NCsoft West actually worked in ArenaNet's favor.

You've all seen announcements about restructuring at NCsoft West, and it's natural to wonder whether that restructuring impacts ArenaNet's Guild Wars 2 development. In fact, the reason NCsoft West is restructuring itself is so that the company can put all of its focus into its top-tier games like Guild Wars 2. Our team continues to grow, and has the strong support and financial backing we need to achieve our goal of making Guild Wars 2 the best online role-playing game ever created.

There we go. Job cuts affected the team positively, the game will be done when it is done, and all is right with the world.

A Letter to Our Fans [Guild Wars via Blue's News]

EA head-honcho John Riccitiello announced that the game was going to be delayed at the beginning of the month saying that the game needed "a better launch window and more time for longer lead marketing."

He was also concerned that the game was initially set to launch into "a very cluttered, price reduced, excess inventory channel both in North America and Europe in a heavily competitive environment."

Now it looks like their main competition will be The Chronicles of Riddick: Assault on Dark Athena, Madworld and Velvet Assassin.

But what does the executive producer of the game think about all of this? He's so relaxed he oozes quotes about how wonderful his title is.

"The Godfather II is taking the open-world genre in an entirely new direction by combining the furious combat of acting like a mobster, with the strategic gameplay of thinking like a Don," says Hunter Smith, Executive Producer for The Godfather II. "As game makers, when we looked at what lies at the heart of the Godfather universe, we discovered a game focused around organized crime. The Corleones and all the other families schemed and fought to gain access and control of different territories, so that they could control the flow of money in those areas. This underlying battle cloaked secrecy is what The Godfather II and mafia life is all about, and we wanted players to be in control as a Don and make those strategic decisions to lead their families to success."

Hit the link for more concept art to help soften the blow of the unfortunate delay.

Jane's Gray Matter Blog [Official Website]

This time, it's Tom Clancy's H.A.W.X, according to CVG, which sails right past Fall 2008 to land anywhere between January and March of next year. Brothers in Arms: Hell's Highway has been bumped forward a bit to September as well, presumably to fill in the gap.

Why does this happen? Sometimes, it has less to do with the pace of development on a title as it has to do with financials, financials, financials. The strategy of slating more titles for the year than the publisher expects it will actually launch is a common one; companies decide on product lineups, and then move titles to the most opportune launch dates to keep its balance books looking good.

While many publishers do follow this methodology, you might have noticed by now that Ubisoft is particularly aggressive about keeping its schedule flexible. Just recently, it moved Splinter Cell: Conviction back as well, ostensibly to put more work into it and position it as a key title.

It's possible we'll continue to see more titles slated for the nebulous "Fall 2008" period getting the bump into next year as publishers re-evaluate their plans.

Tom Clancy's HAWX slips into 2009 [CVG]

That is, until the delays begin. "Fall 2008" is liable to become any date from October to February, and that's exactly what's happened with the impressive-looking Afro Samurai, now delayed to January 27th. Feels funny calling it a "delay" when we never really had a date, huh?

Afro Samurai Delayed to January 27 [Shacknews]

Signs at Ubidays seemed to suggest that the game was undergoing a reworking, though Ubisoft's reps were specifically vague on details. We also heard that a "way too egotistical" Michael Ironside would no longer be returning as the voice of Sam Fisher.

Ubisoft CEO Yves Guillemot elaborated a bit during the company's call to investors:

"We can give him a little bit more time to make sure it can become a huge product," Guillemot said.

Later, he added, "The way we build our [fiscal guidance] plan is always in having a certain number of products... that will not be automatically in the year. It was one of the products that was in what we call the 'risky products'... it's one product that is now leaving to another year, but it doesn't change our plans."

Guillemot defined "risky" as a title for which the company expected high returns, but for which research and development costs are also higher than with other titles.

Reason for the delay: lengthen the development process to improve the quality of the product. That has back-to-the-drawing-board written all over it, IMHO. The game involves surviving/coping with repeated natural disaster strikes while taking down a rogue military unit that's seized a nuclear weapon — 24 meets The Day After Tomorrow meets The Core meets ... So it will need big visuals and super realistic physics to be a winner. Maybe that's the problem, who knows.

Disaster: Day of Crisis Delayed Indefinitely [Quickjump Network, thanks El Cernex]

Report: Gizmondo delayed until end of 2008 [GameSpot]

There will be DLC next week. An announcement will go out today or Monday.

Sony's offices are closed next week and the DLC will be postponed for a week until they come back (but they'll be back on schedule the following week when they get a double-dose of DLC awesomeness). It will go up in the Xbox Marketplace as regularly scheduled.

Nothing like waking up the day after Christmas to find yet another gift under your tree, especially one that will keep you rockin' through the new year. If you have the 360 version that is....

Ubisoft's news today wasn't all good. Sure Assassin's Creed is doing amazing sales and the company as a whole is picking up, but it appears they've decided to push back three of their triple-A titles.

Or as Ubisoft puts it they've "strengthened its line-up of games for next year..." EndWar, Brothers in Arms Hell's Highway and Far Cry 2 are now all scheduled for release in fiscal 2008-09 rather than the fourth quarter of 2007-08.

This will let them push the expenses of developing those games into next year's fiscals and push up sales for that fiscal year, from what I make of the press release. Good news for investors, but boo for gamers.

The PC version of PC versus Xbox 360 real-time strategy game, and love of my life, Universe at War won't be hitting their Nov. 2 launch date after all, instead landing in the post-holiday dead zone of January.

Sega doesn't really explain the delay, telling Computer and Video Games that it will allow the PC version and 360 versions of the game to launch closer together. I suspect Sega made the wise choice of pulling out of the holiday bedlam that will see too many games to buy or play hitting stores at the same time, and have instead decided to release the game when it will get more face time.

I saw it's a wise decision because, as with all rock solid games, Universe at War can stand on its own merits and doesn't need a Thanksgiving-to-Christmas buying binge to jump start its sales. I know it's almost blasphemy to say, but let's hope that more triple-A titles follow suit and that next year maybe publishers won't feel the need to release all of their top tier titles in the same three months.

Universe at War delayed till 2008 [Computer and Video Games]