The holidays are quickly approaching, and for those of you who love your videogames, you may soon find yourself unable to buy food, pay rent/mortgages, pay for gas… you get the point. But why is this? One of the largest holiday line-ups will be presented to gamers this shopping season.
According to IGN’s release date lists, Nov. 12 and 13, 2007, will present the following games:
- Army of Two
- Assassin’s Creed
- Castlevania: The Dracula X Chronicles
- Contra 4
- Harvey Birdman: Attorney at Law
- Kane & Lynch: Dead Men
- NiGHTS: Journey of Dreams
- Rayman Raving Rabbids 2
- Resident Evil: Umbrella Chronicles
- Super Mario Galaxy
- Trauma Center: New Blood
Now, IGN’s list isn’t always accurate (it’s owned by Fox after all, ha!), but those ARE all planned to come out this year. that’s not even mentioning Rock Band and many other games in the queue.
Why is it the publishers feel they must hold all their hard-hitting releases until the winter? The consumers are stuck with the problems of what games are worth their dollar and the possibility of buying a game that’s been rushed to market to try and get some of those holiday dollars. However, consumers don’t typically have $500+ to drop on games all at once. this will lead to many titles going unnoticed.
Publisher’s lose out as well, as they’re all competing against each other at a very competitive time in a competitive market. If company’s more evenly distributed their releases throughout the year, and not just for a two-month time period, the consumer would be better off, and perhaps the publishers too.
This would also help to eliminate the drought that tends to occur each year from March till September. That’s not to say the summer is void of release, because that’s just not true. There are plenty of games released, just not many are memorable.