Microsoft previously announced a push-back before the US holiday season, and the addition of a Release Candidate in February 2010.

“In order to ensure that we are able to receive and react to this feedback, we will also be moving the launch of Visual Studio 2010 and .NET 4 back a few weeks.”

Since the RC hasn’t happened yet and the “receive and react to” window is a fixed length of time, it makes me believe that Microsoft is now confident enough about its solution to the performance issues that it can announce a final date with at least the perception of a reaction to the added RC.

Microsoft’s Corporate VP of the Developer Division, Scott Guthrie today announced on his blog that the final release of Visual Studio 2010 and .NET 4.0 will be moved back ‘a few weeks’.

On the other hand, there will now be a public Release Candidate in February with a ‘broad go-live license’.

This previously unintended RC and final release delay are apparently to test out resolutions performance issues encountered by beta users and get final feedback.

I’m also wondering if a Silverlight 4 final release may also sync up with the VS final release.

The Mix 2010 conference is in the first half of March 2010, so I’d expect final schedule announcements of both at that point.