Splinter Cell Chaos Theory slips to 2005

Publisher Ubisoft has announced that Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory has slipped past the end of this year, and will now launch in March 2005 across all formats.

The PC and Xbox versions of the game had been expected to ship this November, followed by the Cube and PS2 versions of the game in early 2005, but it now seems that all four SKUs will launch near-simultaneously towards the end of Q1 2005.

Ubisoft's official reason for the delay is that it has decided to push the product back "in order to maximise the marketing impact" - which may well simply mean that the firm has realised that it has a far better chance of making a huge splash with the game if it's not competing directly with Microsoft's own Halo 2 on Xbox.

Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory has had a hugely positive response from press and public alike to its outings at E3 in May and at Game Stars Live earlier this month. Its departure from the Christmas schedule leaves Prince of Persia: Warrior Within as Ubisoft's headline title for the period, with the French firm undoubtedly hoping that the strong sales of the first game will have built up the franchise quality of Price of Persia sufficiently to guarantee a Christmas hit this time around.