14 DAY TRIAL // Despite the industry’s insistence of launching high-profile video games in the run-up to the Christmas shopping season, the leaders of retail chains believe that the video game market would benefit if releases were spread more evenly across the calendar year.
Simon Fox, the chief executive officer of HMV, told MCV that, “We would love to see some blockbusters available earlier in the year, there is no question about that whatsoever. It would be fantastic to have some summer releases when there is a real appetite from the customer to buy games. Huge blockbuster games so close together becomes unaffordable.”
Gerry Butler, who leads retail chain Blockbuster, added, “The movie industry would never bring the top 20 franchises together in Q4 and have nothing else for the entire year. There’s not a lot of triple-A games coming out in June.
“The movie industry just doesn’t do that. I’d like to see the publishers spread the titles out more evenly. That is better for them. And I do think over the next two to three years that will actually happen.”
In recent years, companies have begun to push some high-profile games to spring, especially March and May, creating a so-called Second Christmas launch period, but months like February, April, June and July tend to be devoid of high-profile launches.
This year the autumn season will see the launch of high-profile games like Call of Duty: Black Ops II, a new Medal of Honor, the Cataclysm expansion for World of Warcraft, and a spate of sports simulation from Electronic Arts.
The close proximity of the launches could mean that there are a number of titles that quickly reach blockbuster status and sell a lot of copies while some games fail to gain the traction they would get if they had a competition-free launch date.