[Greymain]

Will accept a bet that release will be before Christmas or after Christmas but During the Christmas break ... never.

Since Christmas is the most important sales opportunity of the year. If I was the project manager in Microsoft responsible for the publishing and distribution of Vanguard I would want a saleable product on my desk at least a month before launch. Knowing the software industry I would set a target launch date one month before my real deadline.

I would never ever publish my launch date until I had a working version of the game in the bag. (beta testing and minor changes would still be in process providing that inevitable patch after installation)