[News] Decision, Decisions....

Usually it’s just before Christmas when we struggle to buy, and then play a barrage of new releases. Last year however, many of the games we were expecting to play over the Christmas holidays were delayed until this year. I believe it was something to do with Modern Warfare 2...

So, here we are, nearing the middle of February...and already we've had big releases, Bayonetta, Mass Effect 2 and the recently released Bioshock 2 to name but three. And it only gets busier, with Aliens Vs Predator, Final Fantasy XIII and Pokémon Heart Gold/Soul Silver meaning regardless of what consoles you play or own their shall be something new to purchase and enjoy.
However, with so many releases within a short period of time, many games won't sell as well as they possibly should do. Let me take Heavy Rain, for example...

Heavy Rain, created by Quantic Dreams, is the spiritual successor of 'Fahrenheit'. Heavy Rain features 4 main playable characters, and plays out very much like an interactive movie. A lot of the controls revolve around the use of the right analogue stick, while combat/action scenes rely on 'quick-time' events (pressing your controllers face buttons when they flash up on screen in time). Anyway, without this post turning into a preview for Heavy Rain, I'll return to the point I'm trying to prove. No question, I'm very much looking forward to playing Heavy Rain, but chances are I won't be settling into it for some time after it comes out. This is down to two games, Bioshock 2 (which I'm playing now, the first Bioshock being one of the only games I've ever fully completed) and Final Fantasy XIII (a game I just HAVE to play). Heavy Rain gets released between those two mentioned games, meaning unless I finish Bioshock 2 very quickly, I just won't have time to play enough of Heavy Rain before FFXIII comes out.

I don't very often complete games, but those three games I do fully intend on playing to completion. Bioshock 2 because I really enjoyed the first one (and I'm enjoying Bioshock 2 at time of writing)...Heavy Rain because I love very story-driven games, and after playing a demo at the Eurogamer Expo (which I described back in this post) I can safely say it's going to be a gem, and finally Final Fantasy XIII because I'm a big Final Fantasy fan, and as new POS arrives in store, and more screenshots appearing online and in magazines...my anticipation just keeps on growing. Quite a while back, in this post, I had the pleasure of playing the Japanese demo of FFXIII.

It's such a shame, as I'm sure there are a lot of people out there like me that will pass up new titles. I feel even sorrier for smaller releases (such as White Knight Chronicles) which will struggle to appear on the shelves amongst the big name AAA titles. And yet after all this, after glancing at the release schedule, towards mid-to-late April the releases slow down, leading to a typical quiet summer for gaming. It's understandable that many publishers fear the summertime as a bad time to land a new title with a lot of folks ether spending money on holidays or enjoying days out with the kids (dare I suggest even enjoying a sunny British summer), but I feel the really big names with the big marketing powers could use the quiet periods to their advantage. Less competition for starters, and plenty of scope for marketing (summer blockbusters at the cinemas, for example). Publishers like good week one sales, but that’s always going to be a struggle if you’re releasing a game so close to other big names, so why not spread the release schedule a little more!

I've started doing some research on how smaller publishers/developers get by amongst all the big I.Ps, which I hope to start writing an article about in the coming week.

Hold on...I've not even mentioned downloadable titles such as Rocket Knight Adventures and Perfect Dark...grief!

Goodbye social life...