Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor will now release in September

Well, this is a nice surprise. Warner Bros. Interactive announced today that its upcoming action-adventure Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor is being pushed up a week. Instead of releasing on October 7 as originally planned, the game will now launch on September 30.

Though Warner Bros. claims the shift in release date was "based on hearing fans' excitement," I have a hunch it has more to do with an overly crowded October. By moving up a week, it now means Shadow of Mordor will no longer compete against Driveclub, Alien: Isolation, NBA 2K15, Project Spark and NBA LIVE 15, all of which were due out on October 7. And the rest of the month is just as crowded too.

For what it's worth, Warner Bros. isn't the only company to move its game out of October. Earlier this week, EA announced that Dragon Age: Inquisition had been pushed back from October to November.

You can find our impressions of Shadow of Mordor from E3 here.