Borderlands lands Oct. 20

At last month's Electronic Entertainment Expo, Gearbox Software revealed that its eagerly anticipated "role-playing shooter" Borderlands would ship in October. Now, with retail lines being drawn in the holiday-quarter sand, 2K Games has locked down the PC, PlayStation 3, and Xbox 360 title's exact launch date: October 20 in North America and October 23 in the UK, mainland Europe, Australia, and other territories.

In an interview with GameSpot, 2K Games president Christoph Hartmann said his company is unfazed by the prospect of launching an untested IP within weeks of high-profile sequels like Uncharted 2, due October 13.

"I don't think we have to be afraid of competition or shy of what's out there," said Hartmann, confidently. "I think this holiday season is a little bit lighter in triple-A games than last year. It's actually a good holiday to put something out. ... There's always risk and opportunity. The risk is you have a hard time standing out against established IP. The opportunity is you have a lot of traffic here and it can be a much bigger product at retail than it would be otherwise."

The finalization of Borderlands' release date marks the end of the vehicle-centric, sci-fi action-RPG's windy road to release. Announced in summer 2007 as "Mad Max meets Diablo," the game was touted as having the most unique weapons ever--more than 500,000 randomly generated guns scattered in caches in the game's open world. However, anticipation turned into frustration when its initial late-2008 release date slipped into 2009. Also, concerns were (initially) raised when the game's new visual style--viewable below--was introduced this spring.