Hylis, the Head NADEO developer, just anounced that the official release of Shootmania : Storm has been postponed. First planned for the 23rd January 2013, it will be released the 10th April 2013. Developers need more time to work on their game, and in order to make things happen well, they decided to open the beta for everyone that wish to test the game. This will open the 12th February 2013. A 2.1 Update is planned to be released next few days but we do not know much about it.

We have to recall that, when the game will be released, Elite and Royal will be free-to-play, but the game will have full content during the open beta period.

Here is the official announcment from Hylis :

"Hi everyone,

We know many of you are eagerly awaiting the official release of ShootMania, and that is why we are sorry to announce that we have decided to postpone this release until the 10th of April 2013, allowing us more time to polish the game and open it to even more players during the beta phase.

We want ShootMania to be a huge success for all of you who believe and support this project since the very beginning, and we want to take the time and resources required to reach this level of success. For this, we have decided to go to the players all over the world, and invite them in a grand open beta phase starting on the 12th of February and lasting up until the release date in April.This extra time, as well as the feedback of even more players, will give us the opportunity to work more on the tweaks and innovative updates in the planning for the game. During this additional time, we will work hard on delivering the best gaming experience to the passionated ShootMania and TrackMania communities.

I would like to particularly thank all the players who support the project since the very first alpha and beta phases, and hope that you will understand this difficult and important decision that we have taken.

More is coming on ManiaPlanet, but first, see you tomorrow on ManiaPlanet for the update to version 2.1 !

Hylis"