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Christmas Cheer Entertainment Games

On Launching Major Videogames Outside Xmas 48

Posted by simoniker from the ho-ho-horrible-sales? dept.
Thanks to the Hollywood Reporter for its column discussing major videogames originally due to launch in time for Christmas 2003, but which didn't quite make it. In the course of discussing these titles, which include James Bond 007: Everything Or Nothing, the article notes: "Game publishers, in general, recognize that the Christmas rush... is a huge marketing problem. This past Christmas, they say, there were too many good games coming out at the same time and quite a few didn't sell well." A spokesperson for Microsoft elaborates on this: "My prediction is we'll be spreading out the releases and shipping some in early September and others in January and February of 2005... But we can only do that with really great games that can stand on their own." Is weak sales when launching outside the holiday season a genuine problem, or just a self-perpetuating myth?
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On Launching Major Videogames Outside Xmas More

On Launching Major Videogames Outside Xmas

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  • Just release them when they're done! (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Rallion ( 711805 ) on Thursday January 29, 2004 @07:44PM (#8129980) Journal
    Come on, people. It seems to me that every Christmas a certain number of games is going to be sold. It doesn't matter if those games are less than a month old! Kid wants game, parents buy game. I'm not saying taking a flagship-type title and releasing it Dec. 1 is a bad idea, not at all. But releasing a huge mash of games? Mightn't it be better to just have a couple great new ones, backed up by similiarly solid, but slightly older titles?

    Much more than that, I hate having to wait for Xmas for half the games I want to come out. I miss out on games that way. I can only get a few out of the cluster. And I'm not always likely to go back and catch the remains later. I would probably buy more games, overall, if more companies had more even release schedules.

    • Re:Just release them when they're done! (Score:5, Insightful)

      by fireduck ( 197000 ) on Thursday January 29, 2004 @08:28PM (#8130370)
      exactly.

      Blizzard has never made a Christmas release and none of their game sales have hurt because of it. Every game they've released since Diablo has sold 1 million +. Closest they came to a Christmas release was the original Diablo, which shipped on Jan 4 (if i recall correctly). Next closest would be the D2 expansion, which went out in November.

      I think the Christmas sales release is only for B titles that are easily lost in the sea of mediocrity...
      • If you release anytime between late october and the week before Christmas that's generally considered to be a Christmas release. The industry generates well over half their sales during those three months. The April May June months in comparison suck.
        • The April May June months in comparison suck.

          You don't suppose this could be because of the Christmas glut, do you? How many good games come out in those months? By April, the games that released before Christmas have all sold down, and those (potentially) good ones that couldn't make the mid-December ship date have been pushed back their customary month or two (Baldur's Gate 2, Bond: Everything or Nothing, Rise to Honor, etc.) have also sold down. Of course April, May and June will be slow months.

          I

      • Comment removed based on user account deletion
      • In the case of Starcraft, they purposely delayed the release of the game because of Age of Empires. They didn't want two blockbusters slugging it out at the same time impacting their sales. So they delayed a few months. It worked to everyone's advantage.

        And no... Christmas releases are not only for B titles. Q4 is the most important quarter for publishers and they reserve their best titles for then. The problem that they are having is that these best titles are so huge and complicated in their develop

    • Comment removed based on user account deletion
      • Though considering that it's shitty, it'll still be hugely outsold by the gems in that year's holiday crown, largely ignorant consumers or not. My prime complaint with the game industry is the increased pushing of shitty titles anyway...

        My solution with a shitty game set to release at Xmas would usually be to put a bit more effort and try to get it released in the midst of the inevitable early year dry spell. If it's unsalvagable, I would have had it shot long ago.

  • Awards (Score:3, Insightful)

    by AtariAmarok ( 451306 ) on Thursday January 29, 2004 @07:46PM (#8129990)
    Once there comes about a major, significant videogame award event, watch for the "Oscar effect": they'll still be released around Xmas.
    • Bwahahaha! Oh man, that's great. A "major, significant videogame award event". That's a good one. I've got tears rolling down my cheek from laughing so hard at that joke. Like that'll ever happen!

  • Games (Score:3, Insightful)

    by mohhomad ( 638585 ) on Thursday January 29, 2004 @07:47PM (#8130000)
    I'm still wondering when game companies will realize that the video game market is more like the movie industry than the toy industry. With movies they have the Christmas and the Summer season but they also release big movies throughout the year especially around holidays. It would be really nice if video game companies did this because as much as I might want all the latest games I can't afford them all at the same time and if I don't pick it up while it's fresh in my mind I tend to forget about it.

    • Re:Games (Score:2, Insightful)

      by exick ( 513823 )
      The place where that comparison breaks down, though, is in the development phase. The movie industry has been around a lot longer than the video game industry. They've nearly got the development cycle down to a science. If they want to release a movie around Christmas time, they have a very good idea of when they need to begin each phase of development based on the length of the movie they want, budget, etc. It doesn't seem that game developers and publishers have quite figured that part out yet. Far too of

  • I don't wait till Xmas to buy games. (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    I think the Xmas myth is an excuse by game makers to support crappy titles. I'm sure it's much easier to sell garbage in the middle of a rush when clueless relatives will buy anything based on packaging.

    I personally buy games when I have the money based on an educated decision making process.

  • Depends (Score:3, Insightful)

    by RaboKrabekian ( 461040 ) on Thursday January 29, 2004 @08:03PM (#8130132) Journal
    For some games - Gran Tourismo, GTA, Final Fantasy, etc - it doesn't matter when you release, it's going to do well.

    For others it makes sense to launch either at Christmas (for obvious reasons), or in May when kids are getting out of school and suddenly aren't under the strict yolk of parental control. So traditionally you see games come out at those two times.

    The game market is bigger now, and any given game can absolutely get lost in the shuffle. Maybe spreading the releases is a good idea. I'm not a video game marketing expert :)
    • yeah well, like the guy said, if it's good then it will make it no matter what(and sell for more than few days).

      if it's crap then they must try to push it into some schedule that will get it in the hands of prospective buyers when they're buying on impulse(or for somebody else..).

      what bothers me about this is that crap like the wwf games sell very well, especially before xmas.
    • "or in May when kids are getting out of school and suddenly aren't under the strict yolk of parental control."
      I don't think home schooled kids represent a huge portion of the video game buying market...

      That's right - I know what you meant but you didn't say it. When children are out of school, they're no more under their parents control than they were during the school year. They are under less adult control but their teachers are usually not their parents.

      • I understand your point, and yes, I should have been more clear.

        What I meant was that in many families I've had experience with, parents are much stricter about how their kids spend there time during the school year. Kids are much more likely to have free time to play video games during the summer then they are otherwise. This why you see a lot of games released in May. Check out release lists over the past 10 years, it's a pronounced phenomenon, and there's a reason for it.
  • The game has to be good or no dice.
    I'll buy HL2, Doom3, DNF (if it ever comes out) and some other titles regardless of when they come out. I think the kids market is where the money is during x-mass.

    I say, If a game can't stand on its own is it worth playing?
    • Wait, you buy a game if it's good or you won't buy it at all. How do you know Half Life 2, Doom 3, or DNF will be good?

      You're not speculating based on past performance, are you? Basically, it appears you'll buy certain games because past incarnations have been good and/or popular titles, regardless of wheather the game lives up to the hype, right? I think that's worse than just buying something during the holidays for the sake of buying something.

      • What's wrong with that? Past performance is generally a good indicator of how good a game is. I'll be purchasing Nintendo's next Mario platformer purely on the basis of enjoying all of the plumbers previous incarnations. I'll be buying Metroid Prime 2 and Sam and Max 2 because the original titles were excellent.

        Sure, I could wait for a demo, one of which will probably emerge around three months after the game is released, or not at all in the Gamecubes case. Or I could rent something - which is not really

        • Did you like the first Tomb Raider? What about the previous Castlevania games before that dreadful game for the N64? How about Mega Man 2 on the NES? That was a good game, right? Did you buy everything after that? Honestly, blind purchasing is so sad to see. I suppose you got right in line for the Matrix sequels as well, right? And Terminator 3, did you watch that?

          For every franchise that's had decent sequels, I can point out five franchises whose first few games were good and then went to shit.

          An intellige

          • But how do you know what the current product is like before you buy it? Or does the intelligent person simply use the opinions of others as the only means of shaping his own opinion? When the product is very subjective, much like a video-game or a movie then it's often foolish to think this way. Reviews may give you an indication towards what's good, but another indicator is enjoying a previous title in that franchise.

            Yes, it's almost inevitable that as more sequels are churned out, things get worse - but

  • Just like in the summer movie season, a few excellent games seem to just get lost in the Christmas rush. See: Beyond Good and Evil.
  • seems to me that game companies had a much *better* chance this xmas than previous ones. this christmas, we had no Half-Life 2, no Doom, no new Zelda, no new Mario, no Final Fantasy: Crystal Chronicles, no Fable, no Halo 2. this season there was a *lack* of premier titles of the kind that are likely to drown out the smaller ones. my guess is that other game companies, expecting huge games like Half-Life 2 and Doom to make their ship dates, scaled back their marketing in anticipation of being overlooked. b

  • Why games get released around Christmas (Score:5, Informative)

    by Radius9 ( 588130 ) on Thursday January 29, 2004 @08:56PM (#8130580)
    I am a video game programmer, and have been in the industry for many years. Here's what I've experienced. The reason why Christmas is a big season is that games won't sit on the shelf for very long. The retailers quickly move games off the shelf to make room for new games. Since titles sell more units around Christmas, it makes sense to release them then. If I have a game that I release in June, chances are it won't sell nearly as well as it would around Christmas. And chances are, even if it is a good game, it won't be stocked by most retailers by the time Christmas rolls around. This is *especially* true of the really big retailers, for example WalMart and Toys 'r Us. On the other hand, certain titles sell well at different times of the year. Sports titles tend to sell well during the first half of whatever the sports season is, and poorly after that (comparitively speaking). Everyone here of course mentions games they would buy games no matter what the time of year is, but all the examples I've seen cited are existing franchises. Most game companies will try and release their unknown titles and/or new franchises during the Christmas holiday, and have their known titles release at other times of the year to fill the void. When I say unknown titles, I mean unknown, and not bad. I know plenty of games that were very good in my opinion, and just didn't sell well, usually because of poor marketing support or releasing at an awkward time.
    • A very large majority of the unknown, but good, games that I play are in fact, Christmas releases. Yes, everybody knows that there are more total game sales, but if this trend continues to strengthen the sheer difference in saturation is eventually going to make the average sales per game at Xmas the same as the rest of the year.

      Of course, that's more a function of companies pushing quantity more and more in favor of quality, than simple timing of releases. As any game consumer can see, that problem is far

    • Disseminating information (Score:4, Interesting)

      by cgenman ( 325138 ) on Thursday January 29, 2004 @10:47PM (#8131372) Homepage
      The industry really needs a good way to keep consumers up to date about titles that are released and a way to test them out. Magazines that consist of nothing but demo CD's, for example, or timed kiosks at stores. Sure, they'd be swamped all of the time, but that's what kiosks are for.

      When a new movie is released, there is an entire secondary industry around promoting it's theatre release, a cheap theater release, it sees more hype at rental stores, and finally the television premier nets more airtime. With videogames it is all or nothing, with a store shelf release that will see 1/2 of the profits in the first two months, ultimately culminating in... A store shelf release. The only people telling anyone about a game are the magazines and websites that people who are interested can go to. When was the last time you went to a website to hear hype about LOTR?

      We need to get the industry to the point where John Tesh on E! gushing about Half Life 2's amazing graphics and solid storyline. Maybe then the quirky little games can have their spotlight... and their elongated shelf life.

  • I am sorry but if the game I want is out in June. This game is coming home with me the day it gets released. It's senseless waiting six months just cause it fits the tradition.

    If I am hungry at 10pm, I shouldn't have to wait till next morning's breakfast. There are way too many people with shopping habits like this. That's why all the damn game companies gear around the holidays.
    • I think the reason people buy more at Christmas is because they have to give gifts to each other. Especially when you're talking about children, and not spoiling them by giving them a new game the day it's released. Also, not everyone has enough money to buy $50 games whenever they want, so they wait until it comes down in price or they bug friends and family for it for Christmas.

      =)
  • Is weak sales when launching outside the holiday season a genuine problem, or just a self-perpetuating myth?

    I don't think superstition is really the root of the problem here. I think its an issue of trust and communications between the developers and their marketing department. Old traditional marketing research dictates that "Christmas Release = More Sales" no matter what market (unless you work in something like the swimsuit industry). However, this is not true in the case of video games. With successful

    • I'm not sure the community at /. is a reasonable random selection of the game buying population.

      I think there are heaps of adults who go out and buy games for their kids. I think it is these adults thhat the game companies are trying to capture in the xmas market.
  • Was the lack of mid-summer releases. Not as huge a deal now that I'm out of school, but it always seemed that the big titles I wanted to play would release in the late Sept-Nov window so as to be peaking around X-Mas. Good concept for boosting sales, I suppose, except for the minor problem where that's when school starts, ergo when my time for playing games drops off. Did it prevent me from getting my first choice game (e.g. the newest Final Fantasy)? Never. Did it mean that I didn't ever get to my thi
  • From the inside of a game store, you get to hear bits of insider info on why games arent released this time of year. The programmer said it right, there just isnt enough shelf space to house all the games. We run out of titles and after that, we sometimes dont see them again. Christmas is a big selling season for us, our shelves were packed with new games and we sold out of the majority of the titles released around that time.

    I can see them holding off Fable, Halo 2, and Half Life just because the Christma
  • If a six-month spread is better than a one-month spread, their ultimate goal should be a twelve-month spread.

    However, I doubt higher sales is a myth. Christmas time is the time when some who never go into video games stores and departments actually go in to buy a game. The gamer will take his games when they're ready. Add to that that post Christmast thru January is the only time where the shelves are half-bare, and they carried twice the stock as usual after Thanksgiving.

    I'm against releasing games on

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