games™ Forum

I know it happens every year, but the release schedules for this Christmas are mental. I've always kind of taken it for granted, Christmas obviously ramps up the sales for virtually everything money can buy, so releasing your game near the holiday season should equate to a cash fest for any half decent game.

But this year has been something else. Pretty much everyone on this forum has said it - 'I want all these games but can't afford them'. Gears 2, Left4Dead, Fable 2, Fallout 3, LittleBigPlanet, Far Cry 2, Dead Space, Mirror's Edge,Guitar Hero, Rock Band, the list goes on and on. And this comes after months of hardly any major releases! Surely there is a saturation point somewhere that is affecting sales of some games over Christmas, which would have made it a better strategy to release the game when there was less competition?

I'm sure some games would have sold more had they been scheduled to be released a month or two ago. Especially the new IP's (Mirrors Edge, Dead Space) which have to slug it out with the more established franchises. And gamers would have lapped up having a few quality games to tide them over until the inevitable Chrustmas flood.

Or am I missing something? Am I underestimating the power of Christmas? Probably. I just want decent games released all year round, rather than 6 months of waiting till Chrimbo.

/rant over!

Indeed, it's been a nightmare for people with moderate lifestyles. However, I can ashamedly state that, with my guaranteed £100 pocket money a week, I have managed to get everything I wanted and it's actually been a struggle to not buy things so my wife can buy me something for Christmas that isn't a cello. Then again, I never go out or need to buy anything else, so I've got it good, and bad. Hmm.

Anyway, I don't imagine they can keep this up. There aren't many must-haves scheduled in the next six months, but I bet next autumn will be the same again.

Some companies are putting their releases dates back after Xmas. For example, Reef's revamp of Rogue Trooper for the Wii, original down for Q4 2008, has now been pushed back to February. Despite Reef saying otherwise, I'm pretty damned sure it's because they didn't want Rogue to go head to head with a million other titles released over Xmas.

Yes. And from January-April there'll still be some good games released and certain games mags will have stuff like 'there's no games drought this year'. Then from May-September there's fewer and fewer games coming out with possibly 1 or 2 good exceptions. And from October-December it's games onslaught again.

It doesn't bother me too much, I only pay full price rarely, so I'm playing things like Orange Box and GOW 2 (which I got for £29) at the minute, I want things like Fallout, Fable, Dead Space, Prince of Persia, but as I wouldn't have time to play them anyway, I'll get them next year when they come down in price. No point having a pile of new, expensive games that when you get round to playing are available for half the price you paid for them.

The only thing I do miss out on is discussing the games with people, as usually by the time I play them most people have moved onto something else.