Ninja Gaiden Delayed (IGN)
Will this game make its December release? Probably not.

November 25, 2003 - Though an official announcement has yet to be made, the ‘Net is swarming with rumors that Ninja Gaiden, Tecmo’s highly anticipated holiday game, will not make its mid-December ship date. Instead, the game is said to come out February of next year.

Is there any truth to this rumor? Well, it's hard to say for sure. Rumors that the game would be delayed have come and gone many times over, thanks in no small part to Team Ninja's strict control over keeping the game a mystery; only a few weeks before the game's scheduled release, the public - and even the press - have seen very little of the game. But amid the rumors, we've also heard from inside sources that the game has in fact been delayed until February.
We went straight to Tecmo to get an official comment but all we got was a predictable “no comment,” though the company did tell us that they would make an official announcement very shortly regarding the matter.

Again, it's tough to say what's really going on here. We've also heard from inside sources that Microsoft offered Tecmo a nice bonus, as well as some marketing dollars, if the game made it out for the holiday season - a nice offer, for sure. Then again, Itagaki himself said that the game was only 60% complete when we played it at the Tokyo Game Show less than two months ago.

Our intuition (and sources) tells us that the game won't make it out in December. That means almost every big holiday Xbox title has been pushed back to 2004. But is this delay such a bad thing? Not really. Not only will the game be better, but there are more than enough quality games to play in the coming months, including Prince of Persia, Rainbow Six 3, Metal Arms: Glitch in the System, Project Gotham Racing 2, and Crimson Skies.

We'll have more on Ninja Gaiden as it happens.
<br><br>Perfect Dark is forever
<a href="http://nemendur.khi.is/wilholbr">http://nemendur.khi.is/wilholbr</a