A Problem With Video-games: Holiday Rush
December 17th 2011 16:13
Category: No Category
Remember when I talked about the developers rushing games along or holding off on a release till a certain period? If not, you can read up on it here. Anyway, the point of that one was to keep release dates to tie into certain time-frames; be they release dates for movies, or to make it within one sales quarter.
With that being said, Christmas (or the holidays for you secular types) seems to see one of the biggest influxes of brand new games. I'm not sure if that is because of the "holiday season" getting closer and closer to the middle of Autumn, or because of the holidays themselves making more people buy more games. I ponder the first choice because it seems that Christmas has consumed about one-fifth of the year itself, and with that it has a greater chance to gobble up release dates. Perhaps, this is distinctly from an observer point of view in that Christmas seems to be getting longer, even though it technically isn't. On the other hand, the more days dedicated to the build-up of the holiday means more things can happen in that time frame; i.e. in one week less will happen than in five weeks also containing that first week. So, it could just be a normal release schedule, but because Christmas takes up more time it seems that all the new games are released around that time.
The other possibility is that there is, in fact, an increase in games released around the holidays. This could be contributed to the fact that people are actually more willing to buy games, either for themselves or for their friends and families. As a result of this willingness to spend more on this entertainment, more game developers could release more games in hopes of casing in on this trend. Think about it: if you own a business and you develop a new product, when would you be most likely to release it? Would you release it whenever it is fully completed or when people are more willing to buy it? The trend tends to suggest more of the latter with video-games.
Why even bring this up? Because this is a problem the industry has; too many great games are released too close to each other. If you still don't see the problem yet consider that you only have a few hours of time a day to enjoy a game, so you only buy one and play that one. While you played that one game six other games came out that you wanted to play. Once you finish that game you get another, but you missed out on five other games that you will have to go back even later and give a try. Do you see now? It would benefit not only the players, but also the business if the industry spaced out the release schedule better so we don't have flood in the holidays and a drought in the summer...you know when people might actually have more time to play games. On that note, I have a huge wishlist this year of things I want for new games. However, chances are that I simply cannot get them all and will have to wait a while to buy them, and by that time they will not be at full retail price, meaning that the developers have lost money because they all put too much out all at once.
"This third quarter we have to release something!"
The first leaf fell, time to put up the Christmas tree!
"That is a tough call, brah!"
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