It's getting to the point where we're starting to think game store shelves are going to be completely devoid of high-profile new releases in the early part of the holiday season. Ubisoft announced today that Far Cry 3 is the latest 2012 game to see its planned release pushed back, from a planned early September release to a new target of December 4 in North America and November 29 in other markets.

There are a few ways to interpret a delay like this. It could be seen as a bold decision to value quality over commerce, sacrificing sales that could come from an early holiday season release out of respect for the time necessary to craft a truly great game. Or it could mean that the game is coming together so badly that any version released in September would have been incredibly poorly received. The game certainly looked like it was coming together nicely at the E3 demonstration earlier this month, so we're inclined to take the first interpretation, but you really never know.

The publisher's announcement—which applies to the Xbox 360, PC, and PS3 versions of the final game but doesn't affect a multiplayer beta planned to roll out in "summer,"—cites the standard, clichéd explanations that are trotted out for almost every game delay these days: "We're taking more time to create the best possible gameplay experience... we want every element of this insane, action-packed adventure to be of the highest possible quality for the players." The Far Cry 3 Twitter account rolled out even more banalities regarding the delay, including "a rushed game remains bad forever" and "when you do get to play, it will be worth it!"

All these statements are no doubt true, as far as they go, but offer little comfort to Far Cry fans that are impatient for their next fix. Luckily, the makers of competing shooters like Halo 4, Black Ops 2, and Borderlands 2 will be happy to fill in the gap left in the September-to-October release window... as long as those games don't see late-in-the-game delays as well.