Lair was announced yesterday that the up and coming feature will be delayed until September 4th and this has brought people into questioning weather they have done this because of a recent poor review that they have received for the game from EGM of 6.0 out of 10, though it did get 9 out of 10 from EGDE and Gamezone.

They go onto state that this would not be the first time this has happened especially for the Playstation 3. They also claim any problems with the Sixasis Motion control will not be overcome in a matter of a few weeks which they have delayed it by.

SCEA claim the reason for the delay is for the online features such as leader boards and medal systems.

PlayStation 3 fans took a bit of a blow yesterday when it was announced that highly-anticipated dragon sim, Lair, has been delayed until September 4th. While Lair has looked suspiciously hit or miss for a while, even optimistic fans would be a little bit disappointed that an early review of the game by EGM has given it a pretty scathing assessment. Scoring an average of 5.5 out of 10, the game was called up on serious control issues due to an over-reliance on Sixaxis motion sensing controls.

CVG has put two and two together and questions whether the poor first review might have more to do with the delay than the reported community features QA. There’s merit to the theory and it certainly wouldn’t be the first time a game went back for further tweaking after a bad review. It wouldn’t even be the first time on the PS3.

On the other hand, problems with something so fundamental as the Sixaxis motion sensory controls isn’t going to be overcome that easily in just a few weeks of extra development time. That sort of thing really should have been sorted out at a much earlier stage in the game. SCEA is also sticking to the assertion that the challenges arising from online features such as leader boards and medal systems (which notably haven’t played much part in previous PS3 games) were the reason for delay.

It is, however, pretty telling that the new release date means that Lair threatens to tread on Heavenly Sword’s toes – another one of the PS3’s more promising future titles, also due out at around the same time.

However, I expect Lair is going to get a fairly mixed reception whatever happens – much like Factor 5’s earlier Rogue Squadron titles. And let’s face it, not every single one of Sony’s upcoming titles was guaranteed to be a storming success. So it may turn out that pushing the release into the shadow of Heavenly Sword will do the PS3 a favour, allowing that gamers a wider choice when it comes to buying games in September. Sixaxis issues aside, not everyone is going to be that completely enthralled by both a dragon flying game and another 3D slash ‘em up, so a bit of variety wouldn’t really go amiss.

tidus04 via pspsps.tv »