Analysts Predict Tough Christmas For Game Publishers

Thanks to Gamesindustry.biz for its article regarding predictions of a tough 2004 holiday season for all videogame publishers, as an analyst report from Banc of America Securities claims "competition in the games market will be much more intense than last year", and argues that "some games will just not receive any shelf space from retailers, and initial shipments of titles will be very low, even by historical standards." The report goes on to highlight some non-specific specifics: "We have very low expectations for games of other developers with less-known brands... including Acclaim, Midway (except Mortal Kombat), Atari, Eidos, Vivendi (apart from Half-Life 2, if it is released) and even Microsoft (apart from Halo 2)... Expect many disasters this holiday." Is there really a reason for game creators to worry about what sales Santa will bring them?

Comments

Re:Rhetorical or redundant?

[gl4ss]

well, the way they explain it is that: ***"The report, authored by analysts Gary L Cooper, Eric K Brown and John P Newell, details key clashes between major titles in almost every genre - and presents a convincing argument for the claim that "apart from The Sims 2.0, we do not consider any game this holiday out of harm's way of the competition.""***

so it should be a sweet season for the _gamer_, the reason why it would be hard for the gamemaker is that CRAP TITLES WON'T SELLL. though, it's all about the marketing anyways and god knows how the hell these guys can even predict what games will actually be on sale durin the xmas shopping season.