let me guess your gonna blame nVidia for this as usual?

I don't wanna play the blame game. Vivendi, on one side, take a piece of the blame since they didn't have the resources (is what I'm thinking) of getting the game on the shelves in time. That or they purpeosly want the game to come out during the holidays to rank in more cash (the casual buyers are easier to grab during the holiday season). Or it could be that the game simply isn't finished, that it has a few significant bugs left that keep it from release. Whatever it is, not too sure. But I think it would be good if Valve could of have announced this a few weeks back, instead of doing it just a mere week before a planned Sept. 30 release. (That is if you take into account, them knowing on the inside a long time ago that there was 'no chance in hell' that the game would make Sept. 30th in thte first place, and they just didn't wanna spill the beans as to not get anyone too upset, or something).

I don't know how true that might be, but I thought sites like Anandtech where at the Valve press release, and they could only test the benchie w/ hardware that was set up by Valve. They probably don't have the actuall benchmark yet.