Aliens: Colonial Marines reveal soon

SEGA has told gamers waiting for information on Gearbox's Aliens first-person shooter – announced in 2006 – that all will be revealed soon.

SEGA West's executive vice president of sales and marketing Alan Pritchard told US mag Game Informer (reported by SEGAbits) that the Japanese company will take the lid off of the hotly-anticipated Aliens: Colonial Marines "in the next couple of months".

In fact, SEGA has been "working closely with Gearbox behind the scenes". Gearbox is of course hard at work prepping Duke Nukem Forever for release.

"It won't be November 11th [as previously reported]," Pritchard said. "We haven't announced a date yet."

SEGA secured the rights to create next-generation games based on the enduring sci-fi favourite in 2006. Gearbox's game was scheduled for release in 2009.

But in 2008 Gearbox was forced to deny that Colonial Marines had been cancelled following reports of trouble at the developer.

In August 2009 SEGA president Mike Hayes said the launch of Colonial Marines probably wouldn't be scheduled until 6-12 months after the February 2010 launch of Rebellion's Aliens vs. Predator.

"It's unlikely that we'd launch anything within six months, but probably nine months, eight to 12 months possibly," Hayes said.

Why, that's around about now.

AVP's commercial success was to determine timing for Colonial Marines and the third of the licensed games SEGA planned to produce, the cancelled Aliens RPG originally in development at Alpha Protocol studio Obsidian Entertainment. Pritchard described AVP as a "success".

"This was kind of a pickup for us, with Activision acquiring Vivendi and us having the Aliens license," he explained.

"With the state of the code available to us with Aliens vs. Predator from Rebellion, that kind of forced us and allowed us to slightly alter our Aliens road-map and strategy. It made sense to release that first.

"Aliens vs. Predator was a success for us, and we're developing an Aliens franchise roadmap, so there will be subsequent Aliens games."

In September Gearbox CEO Randy Pitchford flashed screenshots of Colonial Marines during a panel at the Penny Arcade Expo in Seattle.