Most who were able to attend E3 this year will tell you that there are at least ten AAA titles coming out this Fall, and maybe even more when it comes to personal opinion. With that said, why is there still such a drought during the summer? Yeah, Infamous, Prototype, and a couple others are great titles worth checking out, but when you look at the difference between the Fall and Summer it makes you wonder what is up.
Like I said earlier inFamous and Prototype are great games, so gamers should be able to get a lot of enjoyment out of them , but then you look at the Fall with titles like Uncharted 2, Modern Warfare 2, Halo 3: ODST, Left 4 Dead 2, Assassin’s Creed 2, Bioshock 2, etc all coming out in a two month span it’s almost too much.
Obviously, game publishers do this because it is the Holiday season and people are more likely to buy more games with the holidays right around the corner. Though wouldn’t summer make sense as well? Especially for new titles like Bayonetta, Alpha Protocol, Brutal Legend, etc. Have them come out in the Summer when kids are out of school and college, and when a lot of people get vacation time and won’t have to compete with the heavy hitters. Also imagine if a game like Modern Warfare 2 came out during the Summer, everyone and their mother would be playing that game over the summer and loading in hundreds of hours.
Now I’m not saying to rush games out, but it is pretty obvious to everyone that publishers prefer releasing their games in the Fall. Look at every year, while there are quality titles spread out from the beginning of the year till the end no other time in the year can compete with the October-November releases. Companies like EA said last year that they would consider releasing titles in the Summer video game drought, and not focus all their titles on the Fall, so let’s see what they do in the future.
It just seems kind of funny and ridiculous that at a time when the biggest demographic of gamers (high school/college students) have the most time on their hands that they don’t release more titles, and that they continue to bunch everything into the Fall. Next year it looks like the big titles will be coming in the Spring with games like God of War III, Mass Effect 2, Final Fantasy XIII, and more which is good because it would be nice to get a quality run of AAA titles outside of the Fall.
I guess the one good thing about the smaller amount of quality titles in the Summer is that it lets you play older games or games that you haven’t finished. I’m playing the God of War series, and am just saving my money for the Fall. With the world’s current economic mess it would make sense to spread out the titles financially. If a game like Dead Space came out in the Summer last year it would have sold a lot more copies rather than going head to head with Gears of War 2, Fallout 3, etc. People can spend $60 every month, but people really don’t like spending $120 or more at a single time.
While there have been good titles released all year, it just seems like there is way too much coming this Fall. Just speaking for myself I could see 6 titles I want in the Fall, and this is coming from someone who has only bought 3 brand new releases so far this year. That’s $360 in a two month span. Now don’t rush the games, but at least change the development cycle. Don’t set it up so it will come in the Fall all the time. There are plenty of quality titles coming this summer, but I think we can all agree that the titles coming in the Fall are going to make our wallets very sad.
