If you've been holding out hope that StarCraft 2 would arrive in time for the holidays, here's Activision Blizzard with a crushing kick to your soul. They confirmed late Wednesday that the game will be released in the first half of 2010.

The game's release was revised so that it would "coincide with the relaunch of its upgraded Battle.net online-gaming service," according to Activision-Blizzard's Q2 earnings report. Blizzard issued a statement on the delay that stressed the importance of the delay: "The upgraded Battle.net is an integral part of the StarCraft II experience and will be an essential part of all of our games moving forward. This extra development time will be critical to help us realize our vision for the service."

Though Blizzard typically only releases one game per year, the delay won't cause any other titles like Diablo III to be pushed back. "I will confirm that the move of StarCraft into 2010 does not affect the release schedules of any of our other games," said Blizzard president Mike Morhaime.

Diablo III was thought to be coming next year so we could be looking at a StarCraft 2/Diablo III doubleheader. Blizzard's still not talking about release dates for D3, though. "It would be correct to conclude that you could expect two releases of Blizzard next year, but I would not make any conclusion on what those titles are going to be," said Morhaime.