In a brief statement made public last Friday evening, Blizzard Entertainment (the lone division not affected by layoffs at parent Vivendi Universal Games) officials addressed delays to Starcraft: Ghost, the console iteration of Starcraft. The game was being developed by Nihilistic Software under the supervision of Blizzard Entertainment.

Admitting that the company was "very committed to StarCraft: Ghost as a major part of our lineup," Blizzard president Mike Morhaime went on to say that the delay would allow the company to "polish the game until it meets the high standards that our customers have come to expect from Blizzard products." The game was originally scheduled for a 2003 release, but it suffered a delay that pushed its release to 2004. Now the game will miss its 2004 release date as well.

Morhaime continued by saying Blizzard was "sorry to disappoint players with a delayed launch, but [we] are confident that we will deliver a great game with the additional development time."

In addition, Blizzard confirmed that Nihilistic Software, the studio that had been working on the project since its inception, is no longer connected with the project--news that first appeared on enthusiast game site HomeLAN.

[UPDATE] Blizzard commented further on the news today, addressing both Nihilistic's contribution to this point and the need to ensure that gameplay expectations on the part of gamers and Blizzard would be met.

"We appreciate the work that Nihilistic has done, and we look forward to expanding and evolving the strong foundation that they helped us establish for the game," a Blizzard spokesperson said today.

Concerning the game's progress to date, the source said, "It's still too early to discuss what changes will be made to StarCraft: Ghost, but we can say that after an extensive review of Ghost's development progress, we determined that, given the gameplay expectations for titles in the tactical-action genre, we needed to modify the game's design prior to release."

Asked if Blizzard would ever resort to bringing the title in-house, the spokesperson said the team was "currently evaluating the project in-house, and will release further details after we have evaluated the project further. We do not have a timeline as to when we will be able to release these details, but our focus will be on evaluating co-development options for completing StarCraft: Ghost."

And finally, responding to the degree to which the competitive retail landscape contributed to Friday's decision, we were told that "there are a few factors as to why we made this decision; however, it boils down to the fact that we wanted to ensure that StarCraft: Ghost lives up to the standards that we set for all Blizzard games."