X3 Game For Linux Still In Development

Since January of 2007, Linux Game Publishing (LGP) has been working on porting X3: Reunion over to Linux. This game is the sequel to X2: The Threat, which was ported by this Linux game company already. X3: Reunion was scheduled to be released a year ago on the 1st of August. That release date wasn't met and the game didn't even enter LGP's closed testing program until October. This game is still in beta but is finally nearing release.

Generally with LGP's beta program it will go through a period of eight or so beta releases over the course of several months before going gold. At Phoronix we've been apart of the closed beta program at Linux Game Publishing for the past several years and have never seen above ten beta releases. This time, however, with X3: Reunion the 15th beta was released this weekend.

Last month we reported that X3: Reunion was nearing completion with the release of the 9th beta. This originally was the point at which LGP hoped to go gold, but bugs had postponed that milestone. Since then, we have seen six more beta releases and it looks like they're getting closer to a final release.

The LGP product page still reflects a release date of August 1, 2007, which clearly isn't the case. LGP has yet to communicate any revised release date for this adventure game, but judging upon where we're at now, we'd suspect it will get released sometime in September. X3: Reunion for Linux will ship with LGP's new copy protection scheme and their new game installer.

Two of the other games that Linux Game Publishing is still porting and in the beta process is Bandits: Phoenix Rising and Sacred: Gold.