100% Chance of Heavy Rain Forecast for Feb. 23rd, 2010

Time to break our your umbrellas, folks. Last week, Sony finally put a date to one of PlayStation 3′s most highly anticipated exclusive titles – Heavy Rain.

The interactive-drama-that-thinks-it’s-a-game from Quantic Dream, the French Developers behind 2005′s Indigo Prophecy/Fahrenheit, will be riding a storm front into North American homes on February 23rd, 2010. The inclement weather system will then be jumping across the Atlantic to inundate Europe and the UK on February 24th and 26th, respectively.

In addition, Sony also revealed the final North American cover for the game, which can be seen above. Eschewing the far simpler Euro cover art for one crammed with depictions of the gamers characters, many fans online have been crying foul. Thankfully, SCEA will be offering the annoyed legions a choice.

Responding to a comment on the PlayStation blog asking for a printable version of the alternate artwork, Associate Product Manager Cristian Cardona said, “We’ll be doing that for those that would prefer the UK artwork. Keep an eye out on the blog around launch!” Yay for choices!

Personally speaking, while I would have preferred the original cover I also understand why SCEA made this choice. The North American market has long focused on more character-driven cover art where Europe seems to historically lean towards the more artful choices. Still, for a niche title like Heavy Rain that’s already facing an uphill battle when it comes to capturing eyes on already crowded retail shelves, I would say the choice of characters they’ve added stands a far greater chance of implying to consumers unaware of the game’s content that it may be the more mature-focused crime drama that it is, instead of relying on a rain-soaked origami figure by itself.

What do you all think about the change in Heavy Rain‘s cover art? Will you be downloading the Euro version when it becomes available? Hit the comments up below and let us know.

[Via: PlayStation Blog]

Tags: cover art Heavy Rain PS3 Quantic Dream Release dates Sony