Red Steel 2 Gets Release Date, Ubisoft Halves Sales Projections

Publisher Ubisoft announced an official North American release date today for their upcoming sequel to 2006's "Red Steel", Red Steel 2. According to their website, the publisher and developer of Red Steel 2 says they expect to release the game on March 23, 2010.

Ubisoft also recently cut sales projections in half for Red Steel 2, from 1,000,000 to 500,000. This adjustment comes on the heels of disappointing sales for Ubisoft's "Avatar: The Game".

Speaking on a financial conference call earlier this week, Ubisoft CEO Yves Guillemot said, "For Avatar we said 2.5 million units and our expectations were more in the 3.5-4 million [region]. On Red Steel we decided, in our expectations, to divide the quantity by two and previously we had around a million,".

Originally scheduled for release in fall of 2009, Red Steel 2 promises a completely revamped control scheme and Wii MotionPlus support is a requirement, say the developers.

"The Wii MotionPlus is so core to our experience that we made the (controversial!) decision to require it for play. Let's say it this way: there are likely very few teams on the planet who have had a greater opportunity than the Red Steel team to learn, use, and exploit the features of the Wii MotionPlus hardware. In many ways, it's what we do."

Has Ubisoft learned the original Red Steel enough to make Red Steel 2 a great game?  The world will find out on March 23, but for now, sound off in the comments below.