DayZ Will Launch Before 2012 Is Out, Aims To Be Very Cheap

Dean “Rocket” Hall had some interesting things to say at the Eurogamer Expo, especially in regards to DayZ, its competition and getting out a product that was both cheap and usable. His main concern was that they have to finish the retail product of DayZ before the year is out...that is a must.

Eurogamer reports on the speech from the Eurogamer Expo (and how embarrassing would it have been if some other news site reported on the Eurogamer Expo speech before Eurogamer did?) and how Dean Hall has his eyes set on a serious release of DayZ, mostly due to all the clones and competition that has cropped up since DayZ became such a huge underground hit earlier this year.

According to Hall...

"It has to be out before the end of the year," ... "Not just because we've committed to it but in order to achieve what we have to do. It has to be. There's no 'we hope it is'; it has to be. And it's going to be cheap. We've decided that we don't need to sell a heap of units in order for us to be OK with where it's going.”

He also addresses the elephants in the room; the clones. It's become apparent that even though some games have theoretically been in development for the past couple of years, none of them were focused on what DayZ achieved and you can kind of see that in all the “alpha” footage cropping up for them that usually looks piss poor and under-developed. For those of you who want names to be named, I'll go ahead and say The War Z and State of Decay. Neither game has a terrible amount of polish but they're a few of many zombie-survival games on the horizon trying to cash in on the craze that started with DayZ, which amassed an impressive one million new players for Arma II.

Hall states...

"Maybe they will make a better game - I don't know. Maybe what they're doing is not cool to me, but the way I look at it is what are my options? What could I do? I could stand up here and be very critical of anyone who does a clone copy of the game. What would that actually achieve other than making me look like a dick? It's not going to result in a better game.

I like that kind of attitude. It also does feel like Hall is working against an invisible clock. It's not just the competition he has to worry about but also waning community recognition and support of the product. What happens if they're too late to the party and no one cares anymore? What if there's no longer a desire to play a zombie-survival title? What if ZombiU steals all the thunder? All these questions are probably running the team's heads right about now and so it is imperative to get that standalone out there as soon and as fast as possible.

On the upside, it at least sounds like Bohemia is taking this serious and really wants to ensure a launch by the end of the year. And by cheap, I'm assuming they mean a $19.99 price tag? That's doable, assuming that fits their definition of cheap.

You can check out the rest of the article over at Eurogamer.