Like all games from piranha bytes, this game will be almost unplayable in the first weeks without patches, this is probably the main reason for delaying the 360 version they have to release a finished product on consoles, not a buggy mess that needs to be patched all the time

What does gold mean?

Gold means the game is finished

EU and other regions will have it out on October 2nd both PC aswell for 360. I doubt that they only care for the US 360 owners and therefor only fdelayed their version. On the official forums there is talk that the US publisher attracted limited production facilities but whatever the real reason is they will not mention it. It is possible that they will, like you said, put the patches on the disc for the USA but I think it'smore likely that the USA wil immediatly get the patches that they EU 360 version had to wait months for through XBLive.

well i dont think it will die off.

they could release it later on in the year and it could still be successful