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The Christmas Rush In The Games Industry
Gamasutra has a piece offering up responses to their query regarding whether the Christmas rush helps or hurts the industry. From the article: " I think it benefits no one. Developers lose out because their hard work is fighting for a slice of the publishers' limited market resource. Publishers lose out because marketing will cost more in order to make an impact, and consumers lose because they'll miss out on some truly good games just because they either can't afford to buy them all at release, so they don't get bought at all, or they just won't have time to play all the games they do buy properly. -Sean Scaplehorn, IdeaWorks 3D Ltd "
The quotes in the article are definatley interesting, but I have to say as an avid gamer that I'm certainly part of the contingent that has missed out on some great titles due to the blitzkreig of games pushed out on shelves just in time for the X-mas rush. I spend a decent amount of my leisure time gaming, but as is the case with a lot of us that leisure time doesn't amount to much. I'd love to be able to try out the new games when they are released and see how they stack up in my own opinion rather than reading a ton of reviews from someone else's point of view, but it's not fiscally responsible during a season of giving. Just my $.02
The movie industry has no problem throwing most of their good offerings in the same time frame. Movies don't appeal to everybody, so you throw a lot out there and see what hits. The same story is probably true with games. I don't care if the latest sports game ships or not, but I keep my eyes open for new FPS's and RPG's. I'm sure it's the case for a lot of people. Sequels and expansions probably have it relatively easy, people that like them are going to be watching for the new stuff anyway. New games have to have something special to offer to get me to buy them. Throwing a Star Wars skin on Battlefront isn't going to get me to buy it, regardless of how much marketing goes into it. If, as a developer, you deliver good story lines I'll probably buy it regardless of season.
"It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education." -Albert Einstein
There's *always* going to be a Christmas rush because retailers *create* a Christmas rush. They do their best to make you part with every penny you can possibly squeeze out of a person. They don't realize that this is bad for the business as a whole, they just see their bottom line boosted by holiday sales and that's all that matters.
I'd say the rush hurts the business not only for the reasons listed, but also the games that get shoved out the door too soon because the publisher wants the title on the shelves for Christmas, whether it was finished properly or not. Games should be released when they're good and ready, not when some suit in Marketing says he wants to release it. If the jackass was that good at his job, he could sell the product no matter what time of the year it was, and he would prefer to have a quality product to sell. Just my $.02US....
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...which is arguably better than Ubisoft's other holiday offerings at the time, Prince of Persia and the Tom Clancy Game of the Week. Ubi saturated the media with so many ads for PoP and the Clancy game, they apparently had no money left for BG&E. While the other two sold well, BG&E wound up in the bargain bin a few weeks after its release. I'm willing to bet this excellent game would've sold a lot more copies had it been released during a slower time of the year. And if you can find it in the bargain bin, take advantage of the price.
The whole science of marketing has become sinister in its fine tuning and I think it's starting to be self-defeating. Take for instance the huge mark-downs on items after the holiday shopping rush. More and more people are realizing that if they can wait a bit longer for must-have item X then it will come down in price, causing retailers to miss sales goals, and have to mark down more mechandise to get it out of the store, etc etc. Same thing with car sales, people are becoming more sensitive when year end model-closeout sales happen and wait until then to make purchases, causing automakers to go through boom/bust sales cycles.
I didn't explain these examples terribly well but you get the gist. I think if markets would relax a bit and take seasonal releases more as suggestions than do-or-die schedules we'd see more year-round product releases and sales would likely improve since every product wouldn't be fighting for market share at the same time. It would probably help the movie industry too for similar reasons. When these marketing studies first started and pinpointed seasonal trends there were large sales improvements because not everyone was following such guidelines, however now that every industry is locked into these release schedules they're seeing diminishing returns from the strategy, and perhaps a new strategy will fare better.
-- I'm not a pessimist, I'm a realist. It's not my fault that life sucks so much. --
In addition to everything pointed out, it also hurts the general quality of games, because in the rush to push things out by Christmas, features will be dropped and corners cut. There's always a balancing act between "soon" and "good," and the holiday season can throw that completely out of whack.
because people get bored waiting around. When a massive game hits in july it's always bought by many people but now we have a line up of about 10 games I probably would buy if it was over the 12 monthes, but they shove all the "quality" games here. RE4, I'm skipping again, Soul Calibur 3 I might get (now that I read about character creation), Ratchet Deadlocked which is my favorite series I'm only considering, Tony Hawk I'm skipping, Jak X which might have gotten attention in August, is getting overlooked now (and likely should be from what I heard).
Not to meantion the 360, and the 360 games that are getting PC ports will get mostly ignored by me now (though Oblviion will get picked up! YEAAA Elder Scrolls!)
Basically it's not just a shopping time, it's the console release time so everyone's working ultra hard at grabbing money and attention and I have to say it's gonna be a devistating season for some of the losers.
I have to say this year is probably the worst in recent time about pacing, the last couple has been a bit dull, but this year has been semi dull and all of a suddent just ran headfirst into a christmas holiday packed with games, but money will definatly run out before the end of the line for most fans and so many crap games are going to be picked up because of the confusion.
Imagine if they kept Zelda's date for this year at christmas, that game would have gotten overlooked by some people, I'm sorta glad they moved it to April now.
What I find disturbing is that when I went to the mall last weekend, the Christmas madness was beginning already. There are shops skipping over two perfectly good holidays! Christianity has not only invaded territories and cultures, it's usurping nearby MONTHS as well!
/.'ers aren't the only ones who find it a bit riciculous. I may be crediting humanity (or at least the American public) with more sense than it actually has, but I think that over time, sheep-like behaviour can only decrease. Whether it takes a long time or not, eventually most people are probably in some way going to get sick of following artificial rushes. Even if I'm wrong about that, at some point the creditors are going to have to be more responsible about who they hand out those little magic plastic cards to. People can't spend more and more and more forever. Creditors can go ahead and buy legislation to make it harder to declare bankruptcy, that will bail them out for a while, but eventually they're going to have to act more responsibly. As a result, so are those dealt credit. And if the "demand" side of this retail economy we're examining becomes more responsible, the "supply" side will have to adjust.
:^)
Really though, I wonder if, long-term, it really is so concrete as you say. Yeah, retailers "create" a Christmas rush, seemingly moreso every year, and the feedback they get is positive since consumer spending skyrockets during that time. But you and I and several dozen other
Or maybe I'm full of it. My $.02 could be a drop in a giant bucket of loan-sharked debt for all anyone knows.
what always struck me as odd was that there arn't many good games released in July and August. in the last summer, around august there were no big game releases. the nearest one was Fable The Lost Chapters which was in september. spamming game ads to the consumers around Christmas will only tighten the competition, releaseing at a time of the year where there are no other games released gives the consumer a less viriaty of games to choose from which gives you a higher chance of being bought by the consumers :D ... PROFIT!
There are three primary ways of looking at this...
/.ers like it or not, more that 75% of all video game sales happen in the fourth quarter. Not because publishers want to pay more at Christmas for ads or placement, or because marketers prefer intense, ridiculous competition, but because this is one Ma and Pa and Grandma and Grandpa buy games for Junior or when Junior gets his gift cards and new hardware.
First is the "release a title when it's done" strategy... which is absolutely perfect for a title with a lot of hype and latent consumer demand. Big AAA titles like Halo and Doom3 are the perfect examples here. The release of the title is in and of itself an event which drives people to the stores. So yes, putting these types of games out when they're ready is a perfect strategy.
Second is the "it's not Christmas, but it's the right time of year" strategy... which is perfect for sports titles like Madden. Again, this drives people to the stores.
Finally, is the "follow shopping patterns" strategy. Whether
But no, go ahead and say it's because of Greed and The Man trying to get over. Please...
Let's not forget that a lot of games get rushed into production without being properly finished. I'm a big Halo fan but I would love to have seen Microsoft Games/Bungee release Halo three months later instead of trying to meet the Xmas rush with an admittedly polished but definitely unfinished game. It was really the only thing to do from a business perspective, especially with the Xbox coming out, but it's still a little disappointing.
"they just won't have time to play all the games they do buy properly"
Yeah, because everybody knows that the highest priority for a good little gamer-droid is taking the time to play the games properly...
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The cheats end up ruining the games. But of course that's the point:
Otherwise, a good game will last months, maybe years, costing them sales. That's why the companies "leak" the cheats.