Sunday Thoughts: Release Windows

You’ve probably noticed a lot of reviews floating around these parts recently. The reason for this is obvious, it’s nearly Christmas. Well I say nearly, we haven’t even reached Halloween yet; it can’t be nearly Christmas if Halloween still has to be overcome. It’s probably more accurate to say we’re now comfortably inside the first month of the year’s final quarter, the quarter in which publishers actually decide it’s worth releasing games in the run up to Christmas and the other associated festivals where people spend a lot of money buying each other gifts.

If they’re already spending a lot of money it makes sense to try and get some of that money into games instead of toys or watches. Who needs a watch anyway? Get a phone, it has a clock built in! And if you have a phone do you really need a watch as well? Are you that desperate to know the time? Where are you off to in such a hurry anyway?

Putting watches aside for now, it’s obvious that publishers are clearly taking the logical move of trying to syphon some of that last quarter dosh into their own bank accounts. The best way of doing this is obviously to bunch up games into the last bit of the year right? I mean who has money the rest of the year round?

To be fair this mildly ridiculous situation has come less pronounced in recent years. A pretty big chunk of this is games that were meant to come out at the end of a year slipping into the next year. It’s understandable really, games are growing more and more complex with much larger teams than we found even a decade ago, the communication overheads alone are going to slow down development.

However, beyond missed target dates it does seem that someone realised a few years ago that money didn’t only exist from October to December. In fact people have it the whole year round. It must have been a terrible shock when someone, probably an accountant, pointed out that it was physically possible to sell things at other times of year. “Look at movies,” they must have said to some higher up, “they manage to come out in the summer.” Can you imagine the shock of that truth as it passed slowly around the industry as a whole? Board meetings must have been in uproar.

Coupled with that is clearly the worrisome presence of Call of Duty. There are few titles that other publishers are so keen to get out of the way of, and realistically it makes a lot of sense to just try and move away from the game’s juggernaut status. Of course there are titles with little to no overlap in terms of audience, but with the exception of a very limited number of titles (like Battlefield) anything that might share a fanbase with Activision’s shooter tries to move away.

Even though the realisation that it is possible to sell games year round does seem to have been made, it’s hardly become standard. The typical release window still seems to be in the tail end of the year and most announcements that are made still seem to feature either “Holiday” or “Q4” somewhere in them.

[drop2]Now the funny thing is I both love and hate this odd block of time the industry seems to have set aside as the appropriate time to put things onto shelves. As an editor I absolutely hate it. For a good chunk of the year it leaves me praying for a game to release so we can actually publish a review. Making sure we have interesting, meaningful articles for you to read is pretty important to me personally, and obviously reviews make up a big chunk of that content.

There are times, particular around August, where I pour over release schedules looking for some dim glimmer of hope, hoping that there’ll be some kind of game to review. Although there’s normally something these days with digital releases, there typically isn’t an awful lot from mid-July until the start of September. It feels like a drought, and I tend to get edgy about there not being any reviews to put out; just ask Peter.

However, I am also a consumer. I don’t actually get as much free stuff as I expect some would think, and the stuff I do get frequently isn’t games. Key rings are lovely, but don’t tend to produce great results when I put them in the Xbox 360’s disk tray. Most of the time I either have to buy games, or go without.

“But Kris,” I hear you cry, “the Christmas release window is hard for consumers!” Well sure it is, if you want to buy things all at once, as soon as they come out; personally I’m willing to wait. There are a few games that override this, Halo and Batman: Arkham City being notable examples, but largely I’m happy to play stuff a few months after it’s out. That’s why I like the way everything gets bunched up, even with releases more spread out now most of the year is pretty dry; I can play older stuff without worrying about new stuff coming out.

I realise that my attitude doesn’t work for many, and I respect those that want games as soon as they’re out; I’m the same with comics. Eventually it will become difficult to hold off on stuff, as it seems inevitable that games will move to a truly year round release schedule. That will make it much, much easier for TSA to have a good level of content year round but make it tougher for me as a consumer. Sadly it’d be impossible for me to win both ways, but ultimately it’s probably better to have a more balanced release schedule; at least smaller games won’t get lost in the pack.