Don’t expect Torchlight II to hit the market until later this summer. In a conversation with Digital Spy, Runic CEO Max Schaefer said that the ongoing development of Torchlight for Xbox Live Arcade has caused a slight delay on the development of Torchlight II, pushing the title back to a July release instead of its projected Spring date.
“I’d say that the Xbox project, having to do the extra work with the interface, has pushed us back a little bit, so we’re probably talking July right now for Torchlight II.” Runic has been proudly pumping up its effort on the UI and control front on the console port of the game, believing it can deliver a native-like experience.
The good news, as Rock, Paper, Shotgun points out, is that Torchlight XBLA's development will ultimately improve Torchlight II on the PC. “It’s going great, however. We’ve actually got some optimizations and technical improvements that went into making the Xbox version that we’ve been able to go back and implement into Torchlight II for PC,” Schaefer said later.
Delay or not, we're willing to bet Torchlight II will still debut before Diablo III does.