Too Many New Releases.

oXYnary

Is it me or are there too many new releases over the past 2 weeks that have combined what we all would potentially been able to purchase otherwise if they had more of a staggered release.

Am I missing something? What is the marketing "genius" behind this?

nitzmoff

I was just talking about this with a co-worker today. This has been a very good month for games. Usually summer is one of the worst times for releases and they really ramp up around the fall. I guess the flood gates officially opened in October.

cholden

Yes.

But there is a light at the end of this tunnel. The second week in January all ones that didn't sell so well will be $20 at Best Buy. Last year I scooped up so many great games like a vulture after the lion of Christmas.

oXYnary

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But there is a light at the end of this tunnel. The second week in January all ones that didn't sell so well will be $20 at Best Buy. Last year I scooped up so many great games like a vulture after the lion of Christmas.

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Im not sure how this is good on the development end. This just looses games that have potential in a sea of new releases near the same generes or audiences. Its not good for the game developer with those odds.

FunkaDelicDass

When I was still at Crystal Dynamics working on Project:Snowblind, we were supposed to go head to head with Halo2. Luckily, Eidos saw that the game could be much, much better with a few months of development, so we got an extension, which pushed us out to March. Didn't matter, we still bombed, as did a lot of other games that released during the first half of the year. You could blame a lot of factors, market saturation, advertising, etc, but people still spend more money during the holidays, and publishers will still try to capitalize on that.

oXYnary

Its not only the money issue though Funka. It's the time.

BIOS

releasing between now and the end of november, regardless of how many releases overlap in a particular week, is pretty crucial to capitalizing on the christmas buying season. if you look at it in the short term, then yes, it seems like some titles get lost in the frenzy of releases. in the long term though, these titles get to at least see the light of day when the consumer is most likely to see them. and i don't think there is a developer out there that really gets to choose release dates, i'm pretty sure that's determined by the publisher.

i'd wager that having a publisher that recognizes this type of marketing strategy and capitalizes on it is a better publisher to have than one who doesn't, so i don't see how this type of marketing is bad for developers. besides, if you are someone who is going to be frustrated with having to buy three games in one week, chances are the publishers aren't spending their ad dollars trying to reach you, since you're already in the know.

Toomas

[ QUOTE ]
Is it me or are there too many new releases over the past 2 weeks that have combined what we all would potentially been able to purchase otherwise if they had more of a staggered release.

Am I missing something? What is the marketing "genius" behind this?

[/ QUOTE ]

OMG now there are actually some games to choose from, that cant be good. Competition is never good the only thing it does is increase the quality and lower the price and for me as an end user these two things are the worst that can happen

Rick Stirling

The Warriors came out on the same day as Quake 4, and has scored better reviews practically everywhere, yet no-one is talking abut it. Shame - it *IS* a good game.

oXYnary

Bios and Ricks statement show both sides.

Toomas however, smarty pants that you are about supply and demand. Which game(s) have you picked up? How does 1 game being overexpected because it carries a series name show good competition when possibly the lesser or new franchise released IS better? How is this good? Whats the shelf life as far as most sales? 2 weeks was it?

arshlevon

well i know from talking to people at mythic that big companies like walmart and EB dictate release dates for smaller companies.. they will only accept certain dates for releases to hit the shelves.. i know the newest dark age exapansion was schedualed for a november release, but walmart said october or no go.. so it cut a month of develpemnet time just so walmart could sell the game..i think that was the case, if not someone that still works there tell me the full story, but as i was told, thats how i understood it..
larger games that can garantee sales can release whenever they want.. but why release whenevery you want when you can relase on the same day as the smaller companies and kill the competition.. smart business, no matter how much it sucks..

KDR_11k

The numbers I've read: During the christmas time, sales for videogames (all combined) double while releases quintuple. Doesn't take a math genius to figure out that's not a good thing unless you happen to have THE blockbuster of the season. Unfortunately managers seem to be rather delusional when it comes to estimating the quality of their games. So if your game isn't really THE blockbuster you can probably get away with more sales by releasing during the summer. Especially niche games are guaranteed to drown in the flood of releases.

Living in Europe does seem to mitigate the problem somewhat, half of the time, when I see a thread about some game that has come out it's not out here.

Toomas

Last game i bought was Ragdoll Kung-Fu, next game i will surely buy is Oblivion and propably The Movies, maybe also X3: Reunion but not sure as it might have StarForce.

pogonip

You know OXY you don't have to buy them all at once even though you might want to

Mark Dygert

I don't have time to play them all, so it looks like I'm going to be easy to buy for, around x-mas time...