Doom 3's release date? It's Id's wild ride, we tell ya. The swirling release date train has come around full circle again. And in less then a week! Last week, at least four major retailers posted that Doom 3 for Xbox was slated for an October 26, 2004 in North America. As usual, we checked with Activision, which was unable to return our calls prior to deadline. Then, when an Activision official did return our calls, it had no official comment.

But Id Software's Chief Executive Todd Hollenshead was able to get back to Reuters just fine (frickin' frackin', rootin' tootin', darn, horn-swoggling Reuters ...). The game is not likely to appear on your Xbox this year. Again.

"It's probably not going to come out this year," Hollenshead explained. "Back in May, we were kind of hoping we'd have a holiday launch. I'm not sure we're going to get there."

The issues at hand are balance, polish, and interface compatibility. Id is a stickler about making sure its PC game was balanced, and it wants the Xbox version to be equally so. The Xbox version also has a two-player cooperative mode that surely creates other issues to polish, and the interface is going to be different, transitioning from the PC keyboard to the rather interesting Xbox controller, with its white buttons, triggers and analog controls.

But Hollenshead told Reuters that his company will continue to work on the game until it has the best game for fans. Vicarious Visions is handling the conversion, while Id Software is overseeing the game's progress.