For those of us eager to dig in and see what the game line up for fall/holiday are in for a bit of disappointment. I cannot discern whether developers are afraid of competition (my guess) or if they're announcing game release dates way ahead of schedule. (dying light, the division mad max I think fall into this category)
Dragon age inquisition: (Oct 7th) November 18th
Shadows of mordor: (Oct 7th) September 30th ([i]moved forward[/i])
Battlefield:Hardline (Oct 21st) moved to March 2015
Evolve: (Oct 21st) February 10th 2015
Evil within: (Oct 21st) October 14th ([i]moved forward)[/i]
Batman Arkham Knight: October 28th to 2015
Witcher 3: holiday 2014 to February 2015
The order 1886: originally 2014 but has settled into it's new February date in 2015
Dying Light: has been moved 3 times since system launch and a new release date remains to be seen.
The division: some time 2015 probably
Mad max: supposed launch title has been hit by delays
Edit:
Elder scrolls online: by the time we see it it may be free2play
This holiday is building itself up to be an odd one filled with ever changing schedules and push backs. I don't know about you guys I'm a bit disappointed Evolve was delayed it was one of the few games I was looking forward to after Destiny.
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There's a fair few explanations, like Hardline, the reaction to it was awful, EA got a huge backlash from that one, Mad Max, well, I doubt the licensed game is getting much in the way of resources, keeping my expectations low for that one. Shadows of Mordor most likely doesn't want to compete with AC Unity, makes sense really. All in all, however, the most logical reason is simple: Publishers wanted games to talk about, developers need a long time to adjust to new tech, publishers want hype, then they have to delay because they can't possibly hit the deadline because they were never going to. Always best to take release dates with a pinch of salt. For example, Mass Effect 2 was set for a christmas release in 2009, but got pushed back to late January, just after the holiday blitz of games, fast forward a couple of years, Mass Effect 3 gets a Holiday 2011 release date... Except it got the same delay to Q1 2012. Put simply delaying things can actually work to increase the hype around something, it's weird but it works.