Gearbox head honcho Randy Pitchford has finally nailed down the release date for Sega's upcoming Aliens-based FPS, but it won't be this year as previously hoped. Both Gearbox and Sega have decided to push the worldwide release date back yet again to February 12, 2013.

Aliens: Colonial Marines was officially announced back in 2008. The game seemingly disappeared after that, likely put on the backburner so that the studio could piece together Duke Nukem Forever and publish a completed product. The Aliens-themed FPS eventually came back into the spotlight and was given a Spring 2012 release date, then a Fall 2012 release date.

Now 2012 isn't even on the radar.

"We've always prioritized the goals we had for the game over any particular launch window," Pitchford writes in a Sega blog here. "The game's development has been invigorating and natural relative to our experience making games and the objectives for it. Because the game was 'announced' with that original press release, it might feel, to those of you who have been waiting for the game since then, that it has been in development a long time.

"In fact, with the release date now set, it turns out that the total development time we have spent creating Aliens: Colonial Marines is about the same length of time as we had spent creating the original Borderlands or the original Brothers in Arms - both games that we had waited to announce until we were much farther along in the development process."

To cool off the engines of disappointed fans, Sega and Gearbox have released a new "Suspense" trailer which can be seen below, but be sure to read the entire blog for a more in-depth reason for the delay. Aliens: Colonial Marines is slated for the Xbox 360, PlayStation 3 and Windows PC when the game arrives in February.