🎬 DATES, DELAYS AND PREORDERS · WEEKLY

It came out in March. You found out in June.

The date moved twice, the preorder opened on a Tuesday, and the only place it was properly announced was a studio blog you don't read. Following this stuff properly is a hobby of its own, and you already have hobbies.

This routine watches the studios, labels, authors and publishers you name and reports what actually moved — with the announcement it came from, not somebody's guess. One page a week, and everything on it has a date.

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Weekly · Fri 6 PM 9 things watched v23

Week of 24 July

One date moved · 1 preorder opens · 1 out this week
DATE MOVED ↓ 6 weeks
The sequel moves up to 29 January

Announced on the studio's own blog, not a leak. It was 12 March when you added it in April — the second time it's moved, and the first time it's moved earlier.

Studio announcement ↗ added April
PREORDER OPENS IN 14 DAYS
The vinyl reissue · 7 August, 09:00

Limited run, and the last one from this label sold out the same day. Worth an alarm rather than a note.

Source: label store page · 22 Jul
OUT FRIDAY
Book three, the one you asked about in May

Publisher confirmed the date in June and it hasn't moved since. The audiobook lands the same day.

Source: publisher catalogue · 19 Jul
WATCHED, NOTHING NEW
that studio · quiet 5 months the band · quiet season 4 · still no date
THE ONE THING THIS TEMPLATE DOES

Everything resolves to a date — including the ones that moved.

A feed tells you something was announced. This tells you when — and because it remembers what the date used to be, a delay arrives as a delay rather than as a fresh announcement you half-recognise. The same list comes back every week, closer, until the thing is out.

YOUR LIST, AS OF FRIDAY
14DAYS
Preorder opens · the vinyl reissue
7 August 09:00 · limited run · the last one sold out in a day
SET A REMINDER
6DAYS
Book three is out
Friday 1 August · confirmed in June, unmoved since
ON TRACK
↓42MOVED
The sequel
Was 12 Mar, now 29 Jan · six weeks earlier, announced this week
EARLIER
NO DATE
Season 4
Renewed in January, nothing since · quiet 5 months, still on the list
WAITING
Nothing falls off because a week was busy. When a date moves the page says what it was and what it is now — the part you'd otherwise have to remember yourself.
WHERE IT CAME FROM, EVERY TIME

Half of this world is rumour. The page says which half.

Release news travels as leaks, then as aggregators repeating leaks, and eventually as an announcement. The difference matters when you're deciding whether to book the day off — so every line carries where it came from, in that order.

01 · THE SOURCE ITSELF
The studio's own page, not a repost

It watches the pages that actually announce things — a developer blog, a label's store, a publisher's catalogue. Add an aggregator and you'll get aggregator news, labelled as such.

studio blog · 22 Jul, 16:04
02 · WHAT CHANGED
The date, and the date before it

Not “release date announced” for the third time. The line quotes the new date next to the one it replaces, so a two-week slip and a two-year slip don't read the same.

was “12 March” → “29 January”
03 · WHETHER IT'S SETTLED
Confirmed, or someone's guess

An official date and a rumoured window are both worth knowing and are not the same fact, so they never share a line. Unconfirmed items say so, and stay marked until the source says otherwise.

confirmed by the studio
NINE THINGS, NOT A GENRE

You don't want gaming news. You want six games.

Every site in this space covers a whole medium, because that's how a site makes money. The result is a firehose in which the two things you're actually waiting for turn up at random, and mostly late.

Name the nine things. That list is the watch — nothing else reaches the page, and when one of them finally gets a date, it's the first line rather than the fortieth.

YOUR LIST 9 watched · 3 with dates
GAME
The sequel
Studio blog · date moved twice since April
BOOK
That author, book three
Publisher catalogue · out 1 August
MUSIC
The label's reissue series
Store page · preorders open without warning
SHOW
Season 4
Network newsroom · renewed, no date, quiet 5 months
STOCK
The console bundle
Two retailer pages · in stock twice this year
Said once: “Tell me when anything here gets a date or opens for preorder. Skip trailers.” That sentence is what keeps the page to half a screen.
STRAIGHT ANSWERS

Before you ask

Can it actually tell a confirmed date from a rumour?

It reports what the source says and links it, so you can see the difference yourself: a studio's own announcement reads differently from an aggregator repeating a leak. Watch official pages and the page stays clean; add a rumour site and you'll get rumours, labelled with where they came from.

Will it buy the preorder or the tickets?

No. It tells you the window opened and links you to it — buying stays yours. Anything that spends your money on a schedule is a different kind of product from the one we wanted to build.

How fast does it hear about a change?

As fast as your cadence. A weekly run catches everything that moved that week; if something is imminent, switch it to daily for a fortnight and back again. It is not a real-time alert, and it doesn't pretend to be.

What can it watch?

Anything with a page that gets updated — a studio's news feed, a label's releases, an author's site, a publisher's catalogue, a store's product page. If it only exists in a Discord, it can't see it.

What happens to the things that already came out?

They drop off the page and stay in the archive, so the list stays short. Every past run is kept — useful when you want to remember what a date was before it moved twice.

PAIRS WELL WITH

If you're watching something else

People who run this routine tend to add one of these within a fortnight.

WAITING ON SOMETHING ELSE?

Tell us the list you keep checking

Console restocks. Festival line-ups. A transfer window. The one author who posts twice a year. Anything you check manually because you don't want to miss it — describe it and we'll design the output template.

Friday's page holds the dates

Name what you're waiting on, pick a time, and the first page arrives with everything dated — including the things that have gone quiet.

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