We are now officially in what we call the "silly season" where a number of games that were announced as coming out before the end of 2009 are pushed back into the next year. The first victim of this year's "silly season" is Singularity, the temporal-themed first person shooter from developer Raven Software and publisher Activision.

According to what Activision has told several media sites, they has delayed the game from its planned fall 2009 release to sometime in the first quarter of 2010. Instead of the usual "we need more time to complete the game" the reason for the delay is purely mercenary. In short, Activision doesn't want Singularity to compete with their higher profile shooter Modern Warfare 2, which is due in mid-November. Activision states, "We believe that the March quarter will provide a better opportunity to establish the new cutting-edge action IP as a 'must-have' title and clears the way for Modern Warfare 2 to dominate this holiday season."

A first quarter 2010 release date, by the way, is rare for an Activision game; the publisher usually doesn't release any games at all during that time period.