As some of you might have noticed, we have recently modified the targeted release date for Rinni – The Elements of Xi from Q1 to Q3, 2010. Although launching the game in the first quarter of 2010 was still theoretically possible, it felt that it would push the PTS team into a deadline rush that could have had detrimental effects on the overall quality of the final product, and this is something we wish to avoid at all costs. We made the choice of moving the release date to Q3, even though the natural step would have been Q2, because we felt that the extra three months would offer a large enough safety margin for the team to be able to focus both on quantity and quality.
As you well know the whole graphics package is going through a complete makeover and our two dedicated artists are working hard to transform and also improve the original concepts. This takes time especially when you are working with a colorful bunch of people with strong ideas and the will to see them taking shape in a video game. Jim, our soon to be famous brilliant programmer, is constantly setting new boundaries to what you can do with a platformer engine. About a month ago he finally managed to get the PTS designers off his back, me included, by providing them with an awesome toy in the form of a fully functional editor. Of course, that fixed a problem, but generated countless others in the form of bugs and tweaks/features requests. Add them to the constant work of optimizing the engine and everything related to it and you get the idea how overwhelming the whole thing can be for him. I and Iorya are probably the only ones having a blast since for the moment there is no pressure on the design core so we are kind of playing around with things and stressing everybody else with our requests. 
Bottom line: we are striving to release a game that is at every level as close to perfection as humanly possible and we will waste no effort in trying to achieve that. That includes release date delays because Rinni – The Elements of Xi will go public only when we all declare ourselves happy with what we have accomplished. Make no mistake: we are seriously committed to the new deadline, but we will always put quality first and if for reaching the desired level of game polish we need to postpone the release again we will not hesitate to do so.
Seth Lex