If you were one of the many people gleefully looking forward to BioShock Infinite's announced October release date, marking off the days from now until the time which you'd be able to sky-hook your way around the floating city of Columbia, you're going to want to add a few extra months to that timetable. 2K and Irrational Games announced this morning that BioShock Infinite won't be hitting that original release date, nor any date inside of 2012. Instead, it's been pushed to February 26, 2013.
The reason for the delay? Opportunities, of course. In this case, Levine was quoted in an official statement as having "uncovered opportunities to make Infinite into something even more extraordinary." What, exactly, those opportunities are, we do not know. But they apparently were big enough that they required skipping both E3 and Gamescom this year. Levine said in a separate statement that the game won't be making appearances at either show.
That way, the next time you see our game, it will be essentially the product we intend to put in the box. Preparing for these events takes time away from development, time we're going to use instead to get the best version of Infinite into your hands in February.
While this is likely encouraging news to pretty much every other game publisher who had any interest in winning an E3 or Gamescom award this year, it's not so great for everyone who actually wanted to play BioShock Infinite this year. To those who did, perhaps take some solace in the fact that opportunities for extraordinary...erm, stuff of some kind are being explored. And that stuff will probably be great. But not until February. And not at E3. Or Gamescom.