Bayonetta Skipping 2009 Holiday Season for 2010 Release

One of the most promising games this holiday season won't be out this year after all. Bayonetta for the Playstation 3 and Xbox 360 has been delayed until January 2010.

While you may not heard of the game, you probably heard of the titles that the previous team have worked on. Platinum Games, the developer behind Bayonetta, is founded by former Capcom key members including Shinji Mikami, Atsushi Inaba and Hideki Kamiya. The latter is responsible of creating two of the best games on the Playstation 2: Devil May Cry and Okami. Hideki Kamiya is now the director behind Bayonetta.

You can immediately see that the upcoming action game resembles the Devil May Cry series quite a bit. Bayonetta features the same stylish and quick gameplay found in Hideki Kamiya's previous work. In fact, it is basically Devil May Cry with a different coat of paint. However, the action has been taken to another level with even more over-the-top scenarios then before.

Bayonetta's biggest problem is that it isn't Devil May Cry 5. Many new intellectual properties have a hard time breaking into the mass market in today's age due to the massive amount of well-established franchises already clogging up most sales. As a result, the potential sales for Bayonetta are a lot smaller than it would be if it is called Devil May Cry 5.

The holiday season is usually the time of year where are the big-named sequels launches. In 2009 alone, games like Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2, Halo 3: ODST, New Super Mario Bros. Wii and Uncharted 2: Among Thieves are expected to rule the sales charts. This leaves very few lesser-known titles fighting for the leftovers sales. Thus, it would be a bad time to launch a new franchise like Bayonetta in the holiday season of 2009.

A release in another time of the year is more appropriate. Therefore, Bayonetta won't be released in North America until January 2010. The situation is different in Japan, however, as the upcoming action game will be released in late October of 2009 for the Playstation 3 and Xbox 360.

This is because the Japanese market is vastly different from western regions. Games that are popular in the west usually aren't in the east. Because of that, publisher Sega and developer Platinum Games feels more comfortable with releasing Bayonetta during the crowded fall season in Japan than they did with North America.

No matter what year the game comes out, Bayonetta will certainly be among the best action titles the Playstation 3 and Xbox 360 have to offer.