Summer game droughts to end at last? Comments by Robert Purchese

The PS3 is "seemingly in a permanent drought period"?!?

Since when?

Considering that neither it nor the Xbox 360 have been overburdened with exclusives this year, it's been down to the multiformat games to keep gamers happy and there have been plenty of those. Granted not all of them have been superb but there's been a lot of decent stuff nevertheless including Fight Night Round 4, UFC 2009, Bionic Commando, Red Faction Guerilla, Resident Evil 5 and so on.

"Ashes Cricket is scheduled for July"

Yes - that would be to avoid the Xmas rush.

Clever thinking software people and well explained to all the suits.

I welcome this having not played 60% of the games I bought around xmas time

Have to say, this Christmas was like a bloodbath with regards to dscounted games - I can't recall a single period of gaming in the past 10 years to compare, whereby even brand new, highly rated and well-publicised games were knocking around cheap.

Yes, part of it was the credit crunch and part of it was retailers desperate not to go the way of Woolies and Zavvi (while flogging off their very stock), but part of it was the sheer number of new, good games across all three major consoles.

Still have some games shrink-wrapped and unplayed from then.

superted1974 - you should really read the article fully, before commenting.

Cipolletta says a result of this will be less risks and more revived franchises with proven track records.

One step forward, two steps back.

Pachter is a fucking idiot. Must be a real sloooow news day if Eurogamer are resorting to quoting his utter guff.

This is stating the bleedin' obvious, though - lower-calibre franchises do less well in very busy periods. *Gasp!*

It's just that the industry needed Christmas '08 to show them that when budgets are tighter and sales are fewer, it's the new IPs and those with smaller marketing budgets that will suffer first. Hopefully this is for the best long-term, so we see triple-A releases all year round, and not just November or March.

@ Darren:

The Sony platforms have been haemorrhaging exclusives for some time now, while most XNA-based games tend to never make it across, staying exclusive to X360 and PC. And when they do, they're either extremely late or just 'tech demos', designed to be the first toe in the water for those developers, into the PlayStation world just to see what it's like to write a game for the PS3 and to hone their engines.

Add to that the failure of things like LBP and Home in setting the world alight, following a mass of disastrous product strategy decisions (late launch in Europe, no DualShock/now with DualShock, BC included/BC no longer included, extortionate pricing policy) and you soon begin to realise that the PlayStation brand is in third position for a good reason and because its woes have been going on since this third generation's launch was right royally botched up.

Shopto is one of the dodgiest websites i've ever seen, who gives a shit what Igor thinks?!

I think there was another article today that said sales so far this year of games is down, mainly I think because many of the major titles are going for the Xmas release schedule again (expects a gaming bloodbath)...but it seems quieter this year.. I will not be getting most of my games until Xmas Eve this year, just because there is bound to be some of those games dropping in price. I am sure I wont be the only one leaving it late, so I do agree that games companies are going to learn it the hard way, release with other big games and sell less and have to drop the price, or risk releasing it at another time of the year... its about time games companies start bringing out summer blockbusters, just like the movies.

I cant say there have been many games so far this year, Infamous, Overlord 2, and Killzone being the three key ones so far, which is not a massive amount of games... looks like it will begin to get crazy around September.

Games are pricey. And I'm not going to buy 5 games in December. So if they release 7 awesome games in December, I'm going to buy 2, 3 tops. Then wait for the rest to go used. If they spread out the release dates they'd get more of my money.

Thanks, I've been losing sleep wondering what ShopTo have to say... now I just need to hear the tramp outside the bus station tell me his solution to the economic downturn.

Shopto eh, do you get paid everytime you drop their name in an article?

@zedzee

What are you on about?

"following a dearth of disastrous product strategy decisions "

You do know dearth means a gross shortage of something, so that sentence meant exactly the opposite of what you intended.

"Codemasters is one publisher doing just that: Damnation was released in May, Fuel at the beginning of June and Overlord II at the end of June. Furthermore, Ashes Cricket is scheduled for July, Colin McRae: Dirt 2 for September and F1 2009 for autumn. The "greater visibility" of the summer is attractive, argues global communication manager Sam Cordier."

Codies waking up to their sub-standard games and trying to sell them when there is sod all out is not exactly a good thing Sam.....

The thing is, none of this is rocket-science, it's just common sense

@ GreyBeard:

That sentence started as something else and in the editing, I kind of lost track. Now corrected.

@bad09, Dirt 2 is looking fantastic, while Overlord 2 is brilliant fun and Fuel is not bad, so its not all substandard, so i think thats alittle bit unfair.

@loopy the problem with common sense; it's so rare that it might as well be super advanced rocket science

Imagine that.

Analysts finally seeing what publishers realized years ago. Something that developers and gamers realized decades ago.

@zedzee

the Ps3 certainly isnt going through a drought period, its been chockolla with exclusives this year, with loads more due to drop before christmas, if anything its the 360 thats had to make do with multi-platform games only so far this year.

I also find it a bit ironic that the publishers are realising that they had their core audience all along and the hardcore gamers are the ones earning them money, not some casual gamer that buys a wii and wii fit then buys nothing else.

""A lot of this is to limit risk from a crowded holiday release schedule. EA had a bad time with too many games in the October-November time frame last year. They decided to spread things out in order to be more competitive. "

Shame Brutal legend will probably die a same death. Wold have been a perfect game for right about now.

I've never understood this talk of a summer games drought. At least 200 retail games are released each year and that's probably a massive under estimate. I can afford one new game a week - so am spoiled for choice on Saturday morning as I scan through the Play website.

Nobody but journalists play every triple AAA game on day of release. Some of us consumers are quite content to play these games months down the line.

it's about time, cant count the amount of times i have missed out on games i would have bought if it wasn't for the fact there were to many other games about at the time.

sometimes there will be a large 4 or 5 month gap when thier are no games then like 6 come at once, and if some of those were released during that dry spell i would have bought all of them rather than like 3

Call me crazy, but isn't it possible the release of Ashes cricket isn't to do with it being easier to sell a cricket game in a low period. Isn't it actually possibly to do with when the Ashes are in the news every day as oppose to, you know, not?
I know it's a very left field, out there kind of notion but I think it's worth considering.

With respect to the main point of the article - all I can say is "well it's about ****ing time". Everyone with two brain cells to rub together could see that having a glut of games at Christmas and a drought in August was an idiotic notion once gamers reached the point where they were buying games out of their own wages rather than just using the money granny gave them as a present.

Jon

Nothing that I am really looking forward to (save SBK09) has come out in the last several months so I am just achievement whoring the tits off my older games instead. So, "industry", as I'm unable to buy anything good full price now and there's a limit to how much I can get at Xmas, I'll just buy whatever I missed next spring when it's preowned and you won't get any of my money.

I will continue to wait for price drops except on Collector's Editions.
The industry conditioned me to do that.
Especially the first days after Christmas last year (your Boxer day) was a killer for picking up cheap recent games.
Some of them are still shrinkwrapped. :)

Meh. Who cares what the analysts say.

Last year was totally crazy: Fallout, LBP, Dead Space and Bioshock came all out in the same month. The top games win, and those with a little less ad go down. Dead Space, a brilliant game, sadly went down without being noticed. That sucks.
Would be really more clever to release the games all over the year. Oh yeah, and its not too intelligent to bring two games which are almost identical out in the same time... Im looking at you Infamous and Prototype...

Given the typical delays on games, surely a lot of companies aim for pre-holiday season, but fail and release smack bang in the middle of it?

Definitely good news.. I understand a lot of publishers wanting their games out around Christmas, but last year especially was ridiculous. There was a handful of good games released up until around September/October where we saw hundreds. I can think of more than a few of those that would have likely sold a lot better, if they weren't burried under the competition.

I'm with Paulf, a gaming drought is welcome so I can clear my backlog of inventory. Although I'm enjoying it, I'm approaching gaming lately in a businesslike way, trying to clear all of my games before I succumb to another purchase. (x_x)