We’re almost there with patch 3.001 and the official launch of IL-2: Battle of Kuban as IL-2’s Lead Producer, Jason Williams, announced on the title’s Facebook page and forum that the pre-sale would be ending very soon.

P-39 sneak peek

First up, however, lets have a look at the gorgeous new P-39L-1 as it finally makes its debut in the series with everything working and the cockpit now implemented. The video shows the cockpit in motion, the guns firing, and a pretty exciting little dogfight along with landing. It’s a great way to see what this aircraft, one that holds a special place in the hearts of many IL-2 series fans.

Pre-sale to end “soon”

The word is that the pre-sale will end soon and that means that release is finally upon us. It could be days or within the next week or so but not too much longer now folks!

Here’s the official word from Jason:

Attention Pilots!

The window for pre-ordering Battle of Kuban at a $10 discount ($69.99) is closing very soon. If you haven’t done so already, now is the time to make your move before the price increases to it’s regular MSRP which will be $79.99.

If you’re intent on getting Battle of Kuban, then now is the time to do it with the final release coming any day now. When release happens so does the end of the pre-order discount. If you’re holding out for a sale on Battle of Kuban keep in mind that those tend not to happen that much within the first six months to a year of initial release.

Do it now. Like, right now!

Steam store issues

For some, purchasing is much easier with Steam and their greater variety of payment options, however, behind the scenes it sounds like the way that the store is setup and the way that it interacts with 1CGS’ IL-2 accounts is becoming more problematic.

Here’s what Jason said in response to a question about Steam:

For us to put anything else on Steam it requires us to completely re-vamp how Steam communicates with our client which also affects our customers. We are still evaluating what we should and can do. It’s really screwed things up. Not our fault. Steam is great in many ways and not so great in others.

I suggest if you want to play Kuban you buy from us now on our site. I don’t know if and when it will be on Steam. I’d like to have it there, but when that may occur is currently unknown.

We ask our customers to be patient with us on this and understand we are often times at Valve’s mercy when it comes to technical issues and as a small team we can’t just adjust overnight to their demands and changes.

You can kind of read between the lines that they would like to continue to offer expansions on the Steam store but that they are having some issues.

Here are two key takeaway items that people should know about this:

• If you made your initial IL-2: Battle of Stalingrad purchase on Steam, then you can continue to use Steam to manage your install even if you buy everything else from the IL-2 official website store.
• IL-2: Battle of Kuban is currently not available on the Steam store and it may not be available at release either.

So there’s that!

Any day now

It’s really down to a matter of days now. My best guess before was that we’d see release either Tuesday the 13th (tomorrow) or Tuesday the 20th. Will one of those two days come true? Hard to say right now but one of the two blocking items was the P-39L-1 cockpit which we now know is finished and fully implemented.

The other blocking item, something key for release, was the completion of all of the mission types for Career mode. A week and a half ago we had heard that 20 of 25 were complete and we don’t know if they have managed to complete the rest and test them too.

UPDATE: Thanks to Habsburger in the comment section for noting an update from Han that has some bearing on the release situation.

Yep, it’s hollydays here. But we have worked yestarday[sic] to build release-candidate for testing. We have finished only in 3:20 AM. So sorry guys, but no DD today.

The Russian holiday lasts from the 8th to the 11th so they are back at it today. I update my guess to next week for release because usually you want a bit of time to test with the final code before launch.

If it doesn’t happen this week, I fully expect release to occur by middle of next week. Get ready folks!