The rumors have been rumbling and the analysts have been predicting and now Activision Blizzard has made it official. In their just released quarterly financial results they have indeed confirmed that their long awaited sci-fi RTS sequel StarCraft II will not be released by the end of 2009. Just before E3, Blizzard head man Mike Morhaime had said they had targeted the release by the end of the year but now its parent company has admitted it has moved the release date for the game into the first half of the 2010 time frame.

The press release didn't give a specific new release date, saying only that the delay was due to Blizzard's decision to relaunch the game "to coincide with the relaunch of its upgraded Battle.net online -gaming service" but it's possible company execs will provide more color in their conference call which is scheduled to begin any moment now. One thing is for certain; there are now a lot of unhappy gamers who thought they would be doing some Zerg fighting for Christmas.

Update: In their financial conference call, Activision Blizzard CEO Robert Kotick said that the new version of Battle.net will launch "early next year"