Sega: Bayonetta Was Delayed To Avoid November Danger

“It was purely practical reasons to be perfectly blunt,” Hayes said in an interview with Kotaku yesterday. “Bayonetta’s coming out in Japan [this October] but we then need to translate it…. that is one issue. The bigger issue, is that in the western markets, unlike in Japan, bringing out new [intellectual property] in that November period, really, really, really is a challenge.”

Sega executives had hoped to launch the game in the U.S. in September or October, when they feel original games still have a chance to thrive. Sega’s own Alpha Protocol, a new role-playing game set in the world of modern espionage, still has its 2009 date because it is hitting in mid-October. Anything later and it too may have been given a bump, Sega reps say.

In recent weeks it had become clear to Sega’s top team that Bayonetta could be ready for American gamers no sooner than the launch windows for some of the year’s biggest sequels. “If we could have launched it — the translation would have made it a challenge — it would have been late November or early December. And we just think that’s a point when consumers are spending all their dollars on Need For Speed, Modern Warfare…hopefully [Sega’s] Mario and Sonic.”

Instead, Bayonetta gets an early 2010 slot. “We saw how well Capcom did with Lost Planet,” Hayes said, citing the successful launch of that original game in January 2007.