Gaming News Round-Up: October 21st, 2004

Today's round-up includes more confirmation that Civilization IV is on the way, official word on a Codemasters appointment, and European slippage of a a major Sony title. - According to a list of titles posted, and then fairly swiftly rescinded on the official Atari website, a number of new, officially unannounced games are currently in development for the publisher. Civilization IV, being developed for PC at Sid Meier's Firaxis studio in Maryland, the most interesting of them - although lead designer Soren Johnson discussed early plans for the title at the 2004 Game Developers Conference, little has been heard from it since then, and a concrete release date is still unknown. Also confirmed as a new Atari title was Chronos, a first-person shooter for PC and Xbox from Saber Interactive, creators of the Serious Sam-esque Will Rock. - UK-based developer and publisher Codemasters has announced that Nick Wheelwright has been appointed as the company's new CEO. As well as traditional roles involving moving the goals and objectives of the company forward, the appointment also sees Wheelwright chairing Codemasters' Product Planning Group, which, in consultation with development and publishing, is the channel for green-lighting new product creation and franchise extension. The company, which employs 400 people worldwide, is still best known as creator of the European-centric Colin McRae Rally and TOCA Race Driver franchises, but has been pushing into other territories of recent, albeit with the unfortunate cancellation of U.S.-developed MMO title Dragon Empires most recently in the news. - Sony has announced that Gran Turismo 4, previously thought to be one of the company's most important titles for the holiday season, has slipped to the first quarter of 2005 in Europe. The amount of time needed for localization is the reason for the relatively unexpected delay, which has come after repeated previous delays and the worldwide removal of the title's online elements due to time constraints. According to a Sony spokesperson: "The localisation of GT4 across the PAL territories is a huge undertaking because the product is localised into 13 different languages across the PAL territories". However, the title is still expected to edge into 2004 for Japanese and U.S. territories, with some U.S. online stores currently carrying the date of December 14th for the PlayStation 2 game's release.