Doom III to be a small-screen summer blockbuster

17 June 2004 10:35 GMT / By Kenneth Henry

UPDATE:Since the weekend details have emerged regard Doom III's release- in a reversal of the staggered release dates of, for example, the Lord Of The Rings movies on DVD, the August release is to be a special edition. Contents are rumoured to be a Doom figurine, poster and Making Of Doom III disk. Seven Weeks later near the end of September, the normal DVD boxed edition will be released.

That's right…a “Making of Doom III” disk. Much like the one reported in our previous updates with the East Asian re-release of the Doom games. If the content is the same, many people may decide to just buy the old games all over again and choose to wait another seven weeks for the vanilla edition of Doom III, which, if Half-Life 2 actually sticks to its year-late release date, will attempt to steal sales from Valve's latest and greatest. Like the Unreal Tournament 2004 special edition, the price of Doom III SE is slated for £40 or more, contentious for a PC title whether or not there's extra content, but we're sure many hardcore fans will shell out, as Neverwinter Nights has shown, a high price is no barrier to high sales.

UPDATE: Since this story of May 13th the newest approximated release dates are late July to Early August for the PC version and October for the Xbox. Even though it's subject to change, it certainly remains within the confines of a UK summer and will give gamers at least one big title to play while Half-Life 2 continues to play hopscotch around the calendar.

The other news is that in East Asia, Ultimate Doom, Doom II and Final Doom are to be repackaged as a collector's edition, with an extra making of Doom III CD featuring interviews and other behind the scenes material. Activision have given Gold Edition treatment to Return to Castle Wolfenstein and the Soldier of Fortune series in the past, so here's hoping the pack will see a UK release for people who may have only had the classic originals on floppy disk.

May 13 original story

The conventional wisdom is that no-one wants to play games in summer, so for years the industry created a self-imposed release drought from the end of June up to the August Bank Holiday. In the case of Tron 2.0, the delay went on for a whole extra month and the potential audience of the game vanished.

Perhaps encouraged by Warcraft III The Frozen Throne and Neverwinter Nights Shadows of Unrentide both selling a million copies each from a summer release last year, Activision confirmed that Doom III will receive a summer release in 2004, and although the date wasn't specific we hope that makes it during July or August.

If the originators of the science-fiction FPS plant their latest, guaranteed-bestselling sequel in summer, here's hoping the fallacy is put to rest once and for all throughout the industry- after all there's no football and only last summer presented consistently good weather. Late at night people will still be renting movies and playing games, so it makes sense to sell them what you've got if they're not going on holiday.

One thing's for sure- we'll put a couple of extra fans in the case and review this game whenever it arrives