Bad news for those awaiting the next entry in Sony’s hit tactical third-person shooter series. Originally slated for a fall release, SOCOM 4 is now a 2011 title, developer and franchise creator Zipper Interactive today confirmed. Zipper cited the obligatory need of extra polish as the reason behind needing more development time.

“While we’re certainly aware that you’ve been looking forward to playing SOCOM 4 this year, we don’t want to take any shortcuts,” explained the developer in an official statement.

“Instead, we want to deliver the best and most immersive SOCOM game we possibly can and we’re going to use our extra time to do just that.”

It may be a downer for SOCOM faithful, but on the flip side, this shift makes the release schedule for the remainder of this year a little less crazy. Chances are SOCOM will benefit from not being overshadowed by genre titans like Halo: Reach and Call of Duty: Black Ops as well.

SOCOM 4 in 2011 [SOCOM – Official Blog]

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