Retail copies of Dragon Age: Origins‘ Awakening expansion have apparently already dated the full-blown sequel to the dark fantasy RPG.

A placard picturing a bloody dragon familiar from the game’s marketing, slipped in the game box, reveals a date that fits right in with the fiscal Q4 release window (ending March 31, 2011) that EA gave the “visually super hot” sequel in a conference call last month: February 1, 2011.

Confirming an exact release date for a game that hasn’t even been officially announced 11 months before launch is certainly a strange move, perhaps even unprecedented, but what else could it be?