Doom 3 gold, due at US retail August 3rd

id Software has announced that its eagerly awaited PC first person shooter DOOM 3 has been completed and approved for release, with game set to arrive at US retail on August 3rd followed by European launches between August 6th and 13th.

The game might be described as "much-delayed" with some justification, but id has always stuck firmly to a release date of "when it's done" in the past, refusing to be drawn on more accurate dates until a few months ago when it pledged to complete work this summer.

In development for almost five years, DOOM 3 is a return to id's hugely successful DOOM series, which introduced many of the game mechanics now commonplace in the first person shooter genre. It is id Software's first game since Quake III Arena, which was released in late 1999.

The news that work on the game was finished was announced by id Software boss Todd Hollenshead this morning, in an update to his .plan journal which stated "Yes, this is the official word that DOOM 3 has been code released and has been approved for manufacturing!"

The game will ship to US retail on August 3rd for an official launch on the 5th, followed by a UK launch on August 6th and launches across the bulk of the rest of Europe for August 13th. No release date has yet been set for the Xbox version of the game, which is under development at Vicarious Visions.

With DOOM 3 out the door, all eyes will now turn to Valve, which also expects to complete work on its own marathon development project, Half-Life 2, this summer; and then of course, there's 3D Realms' Duke Nukem Forever, which is fast entering the realms of self-parody in terms of product slippage. Assuming the game ever appears, even id Software, not exactly the most prolific of developers, will have launched at least three new games in the period between Duke Nukem Forever and 3D Realms' last finished title.