At the beginning of the month Firaxis announced that a demo for the studio’s highly anticipated strategy game, Civilization 5, would be arriving before the full release of the title.

Now, though, due to the amount of work necessary to finish up the game (y’know, the work Firaxis is meant to be doing), the demo will only be available on the same day as the title’s release in North America.

From a blog post on the official Civilization 5 site:

“I’ve gotten several requests for a formal Civilization V demo release date over the past couple weeks, and today I have the answer. The Civilization V playable demo release date is September 21st; the same day as the North American release date of the full game.

“The question many of you are probably asking now is ‘didn’t you say it would be available before the release date?’ The answer to that question is yes, I did. At the time of that announcement, we expected to be able to get the demo out before the 21st, but unfortunately we weren’t able to finalize it in the timeframe we had initially planned, and for that we’re very sorry.”

So, September 21st is the day you should look forward to in order to get the demo for Civilization 5, as well as the day that North American gamers will be able to buy the game. PC gamers in Europe and the UK can get the full game on September 24th.

Have a look through El33tonline’s previous coverage of Civilization 5 for more information.

Source: Civilization 5 Blog