Those of you who looked at the lists of promised features in Fable 2 and said, "There's no way all of this ends up in the final game" have been proven right: the much-hyped online cooperative mode for the game won't be included in the version that ships to stores.

The delay of the feature was announced on Gamerscore Blog, a blog written by Microsoft Games marketing folks. The announcement goes on to say that "Lionhead and Microsoft Game Studios are looking to get the update out within the first week of launch in North America." Well, at least it won't be a long wait for the feature to be added.

The way online co-op works in Fable 2 is that while playing and connected to Xbox Live, you'd see glowing orbs that represented your friends. To start co-op, you'd just walk up to the orb and invite them into your world. Though you won't have online co-op at first, you'll still see these orbs and you'll be able to chat and trade with them. The local co-op will be ready on Day One as well.