Sorry for much of the confusion on the release dates. I'll try to shed as much light as I can to flesh out Bill and Carolyn's comments regarding this topic.
There are multiple publishers for the title, and thus different release dates (some by days, some longer) across the various territories. cdv is the publisher for North America only. The gone gold announcement by Ascaron primarily focused on the non-English European release version. This did not include North America.
There is a separate process for submitting and receiving the age rating (ESRB) for North America, and, subsequent to that, getting Microsoft's Games for Windows certification approval. These steps are separate for our territory, and only once they are complete, can we officially announce the game as having "gone gold" for the Windows PC and PC Collector's Edition for North America.
Additionally, due to hardware differences between the average European and North American system, there were additional configurations we felt obligated to test that would impact our local customers the most if not confirmed as fully compatible. That has also contributed to our delay in shipping the product on our end.
Lastly, we are presently finalizing our choice of distributor, which is the conduit for getting product into retail. We are days away from this announcement, and a (hopefully) final announcement of the release dates for Canada and the United States. At present, it looks like the PC version will ship to North American retailers on November 11, 2008, and the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 in early February 2009.
Once this has been announced formally, you will also see the game listed in all major retail stores and be able to pre-order it there. For now, the only places you can pre-order the North American version is via Amazon.com and via Direct2Drive (electronic download version only).
Please bear with us; the wait will be worth it.
Respectfully,
Mario Kroll
Director of Marketing and PR
cdv Software Entertainment USA