It seems that, despite the fairly hefty delays thus far, Blizzard Entertainment doesn’t want to see its upcoming real-time strategy game, StarCraft 2, delayed any further. Indeed, the company hopes to release the game in the first half of this year.

Blizzard is aiming to release StarCraft II before July

Word comes via Blizzcast, the official podcast from Blizzard Entertainment, during which the developer’s production director, Chris Sigaty, was asked about the availability of the much-lauded map editor for StarCraft 2. Interest in the editor spiked after Blizzard’s most recent demonstration of StarCraft 2, in which it showed off just what the editor was capable of in terms of players building customisable games.

While Sigaty didn’t comment on just when we can expect to see the StarCraft 2 map editor make an appearance, he did help outline a little just what Blizzard’s plan for StarCraft 2’s release might be. According to Sigaty, the developer is hoping to have the map editor in the wild before the end of the beta, providing there’s time to do so,

“We were targeting three to five months for the beta. We’re really at a three month period of time for the beta at this point. We are still targeting the first half of this year, so… with that in mind, it really shortens the window of time with- with our major content patch coming out pretty close to the end… whether its even worth putting out the map editor at that point.”

It’s interesting stuff, but we’ll be curious to see what else comes out of Blizzard in the meantime. Given the attention that will have to be given to the balancing of StarCraft 2 over the course of its beta (if Blizzard hopes for the game to supplant its predecessor as a professional sport), the news that the beta is only to last three months is both very interesting and revealing.

While many are still acting under the assumption that this is simply, “Three months in Blizzard time,” it would be interesting to see the company make release in time for the summer.