The rumors circulating around the gaming community that Prey 2 was cancelled have been put to rest. Bethesda announced on the Bethesda Blog today that game development on the title by Human Head Studios has not been cancelled, but has been delayed. The game will not be released in 2012 as had been planned. Bethesda did reveal some of their reasoning for the delay, stressing that their standards are set very high for game releases. From the blog post:

The delay is due to the fact that game development has not progressed satisfactorily this past year, and the game does not currently meet our quality standards. Prey 2 has shown great promise and we regret disappointing our fans. We have made a substantial investment in game development to deliver the experience fans want. We are determined only to release the AAA game that fans rightfully expect, and are unwilling to compromise our quality standards to meet a release schedule.

That is disappointing for fans of the first Prey, but understandable. Actually, it’s rather refreshing for a video game publisher to declare that it takes quality into consideration above a Christmas-season release date. Even with patches, which are now available for consoles in addition to PC’s, it is always disappointing to buy a game that is buggy or noticeably incomplete on launch day.

The cancellation rumors began when it was speculated by PSFocus that Bethesda may have quietly cancelled Prey 2. This was based on the cancellation of a preview of the game at the Game Developer’s Conference and the lack of news coming out about the title’s ongoing development. The rumors seemed odd, considering Bethesda had already gone to the trouble of creating this teaser trailer for the game:

What do you think? Will Prey 2 be worth the wait or would you rather see some Skyrim DLC? Is Dishonored going to overshadow these other Bethesda titles? Let me know in the comments below.