Knights of the Old Republic 2 launching this year in America

LucasArts' eagerly awaited title Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic 2 has moved forward in the release schedules, and will now arrive before the end of the year - but only on Xbox, and only in North America.

The game was originally scheduled for launch in February 2005, but LucasArts has confirmed that it will now be able to ship the North American Xbox SKU in December - although the overseas launches, and the PC version, are still down for a February launch.

"We were hoping we could bring the Xbox platform into December," according to producer Mike Gallo, "but didn't want to make the formal announcement until we knew an earlier ship date would not compromise the quality of The Sith Lords. We recently completed a very important milestone which confirmed we can confidently do this."

Knights of the Old Republic 2 is being developed by Obsidian Entertainment, who took over the franchise from KOTOR developer BioWare. Obsidian is a relatively new studio, but will be familiar to RPG fans as the company which houses much of the development talent from the celebrated Black Isle studio, which was shut down by Interplay just over a year ago.