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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 "
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....
Windows isn't the answer... it's the question. NO is the answer!
...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.
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.