Dead or Alive 4 is atop the news charts once again – and for the forth time in one month, its bad news for Tecmo.

Dead or Alive’s official release has been pushed back again, this time to a launch date of December 22nd, barely in time for the holiday season.

It was exactly one month ago tonight that gamers who preordered the Xbox 360 received the disappointing news that the highly-anticipated Dead or Alive 4 would not, in fact, be part of their bundled system. The reason? Temco claimed that last-minute testing had delayed the game. As a result, Dead or Alive 4’s release was pushed back to December 1, 2005.

Fast forward a few weeks. It’s December 10th and sales for DOA4 have been completely non-existent. This is not, of course, a result of Xbox 360 gamers shunning the 3D fighting game in favor of other more exciting releases. Rather Dead or Alive 4 still isn’t even on the shelves. To date, the game is still in production and has not been released to the public. Since the initial delay that caused DOA4 to miss the Xbox 360 launch, Temco has pushed back the game’s release twice more: to December 7th and then again to December 14th.

GameStop recently announced that Dead or Alive 4 is now expected to hit the shelves on December 22nd, reflecting yet another delay. Though Temco has not yet officially confirmed the delay, the announcement has already been met with both skepticism and frustration. After all, this is now the fourth time the game has been delayed in less than a month and Temco is starting to sound like it is crying wolf to gamers and retailers alike.

This is clearly not positive for Temco, who faced harsh criticism just two years ago for a similar delay of another highly publicized game, Ninja Gaiden. In that case, the release date of the game was pushed back until just after the New Year, causing Temco to completely miss out on the holiday shopping frenzy.

Only time will tell if Dead or Alive 4 will officially make its debut as a 2005 game, but Temco can only hope the game has the same success as did the delayed Ninja Gaiden, In spite of initial negative publicity over release delays, Ninja Gaiden went on to become one of the highest rated games of the year.

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