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 Digg.com Facebook Google Bookmarks N4G Gamerblips del.icio.us Reddit Slashdot.org StumbleUpon I was discussing this with a mate on Friday, there are too many great games out this holiday season on all formats. As above. The main thing that is killing games like this is not the punter's apathy, it's the industry's idiocy. Could you imagine the movie or music industries releasing 90% of their top line material in a three week period? Course not, because they're not fools.
The fact is games like Mirror's Edge and LBP would have sold much much better had they been released in March or July, simply because people would have had the money to spend to buy them. I honestly can't see why the industry thinks releasing new, possibly risky IPs in the most fearsly competed month of the year is at all a sensible thing to do.
I know these three week also see the most sales of the year but it's still going to be a much smaller slice of the bigger pie. Plus it seems to me there are now a lot more gamers who have their own finances and aren't just waiting for Fr. Christmas to bring them games any more. In fact, there are far more gamers who have to buy the presents now, so they have effectively less money to spend than in the rest of the year.
The christmas crunch is a joke and an increasingly unsustainable one - and the fact the economy crashed in September just makes look all the more pointless and shortsighted. It's putting all your eggs in one basket then putting the basket on the train tracks and hoping a train doesn't come along. Its possibly the industries most stupid idea after DRM. For pity's sake stop the ludicrous notion that we all only buy games in November.
Jon ^^^ Great post ^^^ This is why I was glad Nintendo released Mario Kart in April, and Smash Bros in May (or was it June? Some time around then). Same with GTAIV. Companies need to release "summer blockbusters" and space out their releases to avoid losing sales to a much bigger release, much as film distributors do (especially if the games industry is meant to be taken seriously as a film-like entertainment medium). In the GAME I work in Left4Dead on the 360 has sold very, very well. Not at all on the PC but the 360 verison we have twice ran out of stock of. Hell, I got it and I love it. Is anyone really suprised that sequels to ps3 launch titles didn't do well. The only reason they sold well was cos there was nothing else to buy.
It is a real shame about LBP though. I really thought that would catch on.
As for Rare, as I always say, it's not Rare without the Stampers. I was just talking to the wife about things like this. The games like say Mirrors edge i am interested in but only on PC, is not out. But publishers need to wise up release stuff throughtout the year. Oh and instead of being console exclusive release them on pc say and if its a console port have it that it can use the 360 controller. I know i would have bought Star Wars sooner instead of a reduced price of £20 if it had of came out on PC.Oh as for copy protection have multiply installs and have it that each publisher has a steam like install verifier so you cant pirate it. Reason as FarCry 2 was saying no disc in tray when it was i found out even the troubleshooting i was told to do didnt work , but trial and error i discovered not to patch it. But back on topic. DvD releases are seeming to be the same. Indy, Walle , Kung fu Pands ,to name a few that have came out too close to Christmas i know these may have been better spaced out but when your monthy paid. The blu ray prices are a bit hard to swallow. Also prices on EAstore and Steam could be better considering that games tend to be slightly cheaper in shop.Come on no disk or manual (paperwise) or case and lack off download time and they still end up cheaper. But yeah Christmas is a time of giving but there is 12 months of the year and you can always advertise the game closer to Christmas if it was already out!
Guys and gals sorry for rambling :) Well it does mean there will be some great games either cheap or 2nd hand next year. I wouldn't pay £40 for Banjo (mainly because some IDIOT at Rare decided to fiddle with a perfectly good franchise), but I would pay £20. Ish. It's sad but true. I'll probably pick up a fair few of these in the summer though when the release schedule dries up.
There was nothing to play this summer and now we have a stupid amount of quality titles to wade through. It's a hard life being a gamer.
Oh yeah, and Rare should've stayed with Nintendo. They're just not being used to their full potential with Microsoft. So many of the N64's best games were Rare titles! They've only had five (I think) games released under Microsoft and none of them have shined in the way they did when they were making games for Nintendo. I can't imagine what kind of games they'd come up with for the Wii. It would be horrible to see a company that was for a long time, arguably the best game studio, not just in the UK but the world be shut down by the corporate big wigs at Microsoft.
We should start a petition to get Nintendo to buy Rare back! I Totally agree with jonbwfc. The publishers still act as if the computer game market relies on children and I'm amazed this idiocy has continued this long. The likes of Mirrors Edge, Motorstorm 2 and co would have been hits had they been released in July or August. Most customers I see are of working age and are looking to buy a game or two a month, they have a regular wage and want to buy games regularly. Throughout the summer months I have customers coming in and asking what is coming out, the usual answer is "not much". I dont understand Left 4 Dead not selling well. Everywhere I went it was sold out...but maybe thats the problem. maybe. If they released those titles troughout the year instead of saving them for Xmas then they might of fared better. Games only selling at Xmas has been a myth for years.
Gamers will buy games no matter what time of year they are released. Think they might of learnt this by now. Agreed.
The problem is that they're just too greedy - they're all bringing out their games at Christmas because they think they'll get more instant sales. I haven't seen left 4 Dead ANYWHERE.. so it can't be selling that badly...
I do wonder who determines release dates, the only game I've bought recently is Fallout 3 and I'm chipping through that to pass my time, otherwise I would have spent all my xmas prezzy money on a lot more!! thank god woolworths as folded, i finally get to see the death of those stupid dog and sheep mascots. you could tell they were being hit hard when they decided to use sock puppets as an advertising ploy. and speak for yourselves pcg, thanks to my redundancy package i have plenty of money to buy all the games i want, and i have done! the only thing is, i have only bought 4 (including kayne & lynch believe it or not) as well as fallout 3 (awesome), left 4 dead (awesome) and spore. i dont know about anyone else but EVERYONE has told me farcry 2 sucks and i dont bother with consoles (im not a cow ready to be milked) so screw that sausagefest gears 2. i really do not know what all the fuss is about I bought the new COD because I was getting bored of COD4 and wanted another great online game. However I have so far spent more time on the Left 4 Dead demo online then on COD:WAW online. Even the demo has so much replayability and is so fantastic, it will probably be my game of the year when I finally get it. However as a man in his 20s I decided I'd get it as a christmas present to save myself £40 and the embarassment of getting a present I didn't want. I hope it's sales pick up and everyone realises how great it is, it is an amazing game and PS3 owners deserve the chance to play it too Valve.
In conclusion, the Left 4 Dead demo is better than most full games including the new COD. It's true- Rare are of a different time- a superior time, in terms of the market, for the platform games that they excel in. They have covered other genres, of course, but it is in epic platform games that they have little competition. Lots of people mention Banjo Kazooie but Donkey Kong 64, despite involving a lot of collecting, is an interesting game in its own right and Conker's Bad Fur Day had a lot of fans.
It should be acknowledged that Rare's strengths are primarily innocent, colourful games with a sometimes surreal, tongue in cheek British flavour.
The problem for Rare is that, if they had kept on doing exactly what they had done on the Nintendo consoles, the Xbox360 crowd would have dismissed it as old school and too cute (even though Conker does a lot of not cute things in the N64 game). Rare concentrated on the war aspect in Conker: Live and reloaded, presumably to appeal to the gun nuts on Xbox360, but still, I feel, it wouldn't be seen as gritty enough for many Xbox360 players.
Although it had some very shiny graphics, Perfect Dark Zero was very last generation in terms of how you approach missions and it had a cartoon-like feel that would have put off many Xbox360 players.
The Xbox360 has enough studios making war games for it. Rare need to stay relatively innocent, not pander to the violent tastes of many Xbox360 owners. I wonder what exactly Peter Moore and Microsoft wanted from Rare? Profit obviously. Like many people in the above posts, I too agree there are too many great games out. One has to remember that most of these titles are being released at the +£40 area and in a time of recession, its asking for trouble. Come January I will be straight down to town to pick up my copy of EndWar, because I simply cannot afford it after spending so much on titles released earlier, like Mercs2 and Fable 2.
I may even miss out on COD:WAW completely and wait for COD:MW2 Banjo 3 was on my to-buy list. Then I played the demo, and thought it was uninteresting and dull.
Same with Mirror's Edge. I was going to buy it, played the demo, and realised it was fiddly and annoying. It would've been so much better without all the combat/gun crap.
I would be enjoying Fallout 3 right now, if it WASN'T FULL OF BUGS and didn't KEEP CRASHING.
I was surprised by Gears 2 - I really didn't think much of the original, but the sequel is one of the best games I've played this year.
If I ever get to finish Fallout 3, I might pick up Dead Space and also Endwar. The joy of shouting orders down a microphone made me feel about 10 years old again! I'm unhappy that mirrors edge isn't doing that well, but it only costs ?35 now, so that's good for me. How many good games are wasted because they are rushed to get to the market before Xmas? You have to wonder how much better well some potentially great games could do if only they were given a few months longer to develop, and released after christmas when the industry goes quiet.
Assassins Creed for instance. I agree that some titles would clearly do better away from the madness that is xmas.Look at how Capcom time thier releases now.
lol Lips vs Singstar ABBA...there was only ever gonna one winner in this contest.Silly of M$ to release this same time as Sony release product featuring (still) on of the biggest bands in the world. The market is saturated right now and that is the problem. So many games means many more worthy games will get left out. Truthfully I believe it all comes down to marketing. The problem I've noticed with LittleBigPlanet is that not everybody seems to know what it is. The majority look at it and see some weird looking side scrolling platformer. They don't know you can make your levels, which is probably the biggest selling point.
The advertisments for it don't really help. Unless you already knew about it, I doubt you would think, "Oh, these are levels that someone has created themselves. Thats pretty good!" You would just assume they are levels from the game with some random narrator trying to be funny.
I know a lot of gamers that don't fully "get" LittleBigPlanet so how are the joe public going to understand what it's all about?
It's a shame because it deserves better. Left4Dead is being bought on Steam, as it should be. They even had a "buy-3-get-one-free" - which we only discovered after buying four separate copies. *do'h* Mirrors edge could have been so much more, but they tacked on a stupid cartoony story, and then killed it stone dead with a naff combat mechanic. I had been expecting something like the scenes in the matrix when the agents are chasing neo/trinity, which would have been a lot better than this. :? one of my friends at work got a ps3 last week and i suggested he gets lbp for it but he took it back to swap without even playing it because his friends thought it was a kids game. i cant help feel this is a problem for it as it isn't perceived as a game for adults. its a shame really as most people that have played it seem to love it. I wouldn't worry about the sales for LBP. You have to remember that MM and Sony haven't had to spend vast amounts of money to develop the game, unlike say Gears 2 or Resistance 2. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if MM actually made more money out of LBP than some of the developers of games like COD5, etc.
And they probably only spent a couple of threpnies on advertising as well. there's a simple solution here - slash the prices of these crap sellers and the punters will come a buying. I know I'd pick up Banjo, MotorStorm 2 and a few others listed above if retailers and publishers slashed the prices.
At least they'd recoup some of their money :o) This is what happens when retarded publishers decide to release EVERY F**KING GAME in time for Thanksgiving/Christmas. Idiots. I hope this trend is abandoned soon.
Incidently, RIP Rare. You've got complacent & out of touch in your country mansion. Employees: Get your CVs out the door now; it's only a matter of time before you're Ensembled. One of the biggest travesties of modern gaming is that LBP still hasn't reached a million sales. It is an amazingly accomplished little game; endearing, cute, clever as hell and in places harder than a concrete Chuck Norris.
Yet it's lost behind the wall of named sequels and over-hyped crap. Beyond merely "a shame", this is "an absolute atrocity". LBP is the definition of an indie game. People don't get it, and to be honest it is their loss. It's a bit like not watching a film because it hasn't got a big star in it. The most inportant thing to remember is that WE are enjoying it - sod everybody else! Banjo-Kazooie - Peter Moore wasn't right about RARE in general. We just want the pre-microsoft RARE (although I did enjoy Kameo). If BK had've been a tradtional platformer with those graphics, it would have sold much much better, because that's what the 360 is needing. Simple as that. If MS still want BK to be their mascot, then I truly hope that the next game goes back to their roots. Like many people said before and at the time it was released, this vehicle based malarky shouldn't have been used with an already established franchise.
Mirrors Edge - It's a beautiful game, and when it works, it's fantastic, but the cons are too frustrating. Combat is horrible (2 gun barrel hits and I'm a goner??), too many stop and starts and it's a VERY quick game to get through.
Err, that's all I gots to say abouts that. I think there are good and bad points to having so many games released in such a short period. The good thing is, if you hold off buying some games until there is a games drought, you will probably get them cheaper. The bad thing is, the bosses at the games companies will have to put off upgrading their Ferrari this year :cry:. So some have'nt done as well as they should have... and for every Leona Lewis there is a Steve Brookstein and two David Sneddons, it is inevitable that there is a balance and some will fall by the wayside. True enough - anyone who doesn't buy it is missing out. But I want it to be successful because it deserves to be.
And, on a selfish level, I want a sequel :) I'm pretty sure that I read that they were already working on a sequel. And like I said in a previous post, Sony and MM will make more money of LBP than most of the better selling games because it cost them comparitively little to make. This year there have been far far too many decent titles in such a short space of time to buy everything I was interested in would cost about £400. There's no way i can afford that at any time of the year plus you have to weigh up can you actually play 10 games at once?
I've decided this year that no-one buys me games for crimbo, i'm still getting through fable 2 and far cry 2 right now. Come 26th Dec most games that weren't in the top 10 too long will be £25 range easy.
If i can cash from people this year i'll get far more enjoyment and more for my money playing these games after xmas when nothing comes out for months worth playing! Maybe Sony should dig a little deeper into their pockets and buy some bloody advertising space on TV??
I've see a few LBP adverts on TV, that to be honest would not make me buy it - it doesn't really tell you what it does and making cool levels is one thing, but not enough to make me buy a game if the actual game sucks. The ad says very little about the gameplay. And alot of people will simply not have the time or inclination to sit around and design levels for a game, they paid £40+ for the privilege of not having to do that!
Just because the wii has nailed the casual crowd, doesn't mean that every PS3/360 owner is a hardcore games fan who reads websites and knows what is what.
I know this is an issue with all consoles, but the list is pretty PS3 heavy, so it makes me think either the games were crappier than people hoped or their advertising sucks. And these games are big hitters too, all hyped up by Sony and ultimately (in terms of motostorm and RFOM2 a little underwhelming on actual release).
Considering that the UK has been fairly pro Sony and sales are at a solid level considering it came out about 16 months after the 360, the performance of the games in the charts is worrying. Companies can't afford to spend tens of millions of pounds and not recoup the money, not when they are making a loss on every console. Then we will see yearly franchise games ruling the charts completely.
On the plus side, didn't Sony delay KZ2 until Feb because of the current deluge of games? Perhaps they should've whacked KZ2 out instead of RFOM2 (people should read the comments on IGNUK's review; talk about angry gamers!).
Oh, and Rare are simply not the same company that produced all the N64 classics. I think even MS knew Banjp Kazooie was going to be a bit shite, as they were pretty quiet about it in relation to the normal OTT MS fanfare.
Sorry, this is a massive post.
ps LBP is surely the radiohead of games. It's different, trying new things, original, not everybody's cup of tea and still expected to shift a shed load of copies. Sony don't release cute games for fun or for art (like indies). They do it for money! As do they all. But you're right, if you are enjoying it, then sod all the doubters! ive gone out my way to buy a PS3 (again) with LBP in for friday (payday!!!! with a nice £300 bonus this year!!), theres other packages with other games i want but i just wont look at them unless theyve got LBP in....cant wait to play it...
:D how do they equate the sales of consoles bundled with games?
they had some really good deals on amazon with ps3 bundled with little big planet + a couple of games for about £300 and im sure a lot of people bought that for christmas, i know i did :D Im quite sad that Endwar has done poorly. It really is a good game and its the first RTS that works properly on consoles with little control issues and no performance issues If Rare thinks that Banjo gameplay is feeling a bit stale this gen then why can't they release an N64 HD graphics Banjo -- Threeie on the XBLA, peopke would put up with it's so called "stale" gameplay if they had it cheaper.
Also, am I the only one that enjoyed BKN&B?
Although the cars are awful at handling it's great for vehicle building... and at the end they do get all their old moves back in a cardboard box so there is still hope ... (fingers crossed) Rare have been a busted flush for a long time. The games are more about showing off than gameplay. Honest, the original Banjo was a pale imitation of SM64. | 
