Do game publishers benefit from non-standardized release dates?

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Originally Posted by TobalRox

Tuesday AND Friday? Do you mean DVDs for Tuesday, and theaters for Friday? Because DVDs don't come out on Tuesdays. Sometimes there are movies that come out on wednesdays in theaters too.

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No shit. I don't see why people think the game industry should follow the movie industry's release model. It has just as many problems. Movies don't always get released in theaters on Fridays. More and more of them are actually moving to Wednesday releases. Both Star Wars prequels and both Matrix sequels immediately come to mind as examples.

Napolean Dynamite had been in NY/LA theaters for two months before it came to the Chicago area. Garden State was a similar situation. Should gamers have to deal with this "limited release" crap too?

Really, you can't even compare the release date standards of the movie and game industries, because their business/profit/distribution models are entirely different.

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Originally Posted by Mamoscott

Really, you can't even compare the release date standards of the movie and game industries, because their business/profit/distribution models are entirely different.

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serious question:

How are the distribution models different?

Because one gets them in the hands of consumers on time, and the other doesn't.

Release dates are MUCH more reliable now than they ever were in the past. In the NES/Genesis/SNES days, games just arrived when they did.

Most new games are shipped on Tuesday now anyway.

They're more reliable than they were ten years ago, maybe, but they're worse than they were even just a few years ago, when I could count on EB to get stuff in ON the "ship" date.

Its just unreliable. Thats all there is to it. And unreliability is no good.

Publishers pimp release dates in commercials and advertisements and on their websites (and that date is usually a Tuesday), but the games dont actually get in the store that day. Its the ship date. Usually.

That sort of crap is just unacceptable. I dont see why people are giving excuses asto why publishers are allowed to pimp these dates and not deliver it on that day.

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Originally Posted by Videodrone

serious question:

How are the distribution models different?

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Movies are sold/rented/leased/whatever to theaters in blocks (usually consisting of like 3-4 films) from a studio. This gives studios leverage in distributing a variety of movies and helps to ensure that theaters will not only show sure-fire hits guaranteed to make them money. So for example, when New Line is shopping around something like LOTR (guaranteed blockbuster) to theaters, more than likely the movie is being packaged in a block with two or three lesser-known/independent/niche/whatever films (ones that have a greater potential to flop). This model facilitates the distribution of "smaller" films and helps spread out and lessen the risk of making/marketing/distributing such films for the studio.

If I had the time, I could give you a much more complicated and involved answer, but unfortunately, I am at work right now. That's just one aspect of how they differ though, and my above example is really simplified.

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Originally Posted by Mamoscott

No shit. I don't see why people think the game industry should follow the movie industry's release model. It has just as many problems. Movies don't always get released in theaters on Fridays. More and more of them are actually moving to Wednesday releases. Both Star Wars prequels and both Matrix sequels immediately come to mind as examples.

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Huge movies do that in order to reach maximum profit, if they released on Friday you'd have a lot more people turned over to competing movies due to showings selling out. Releasing on Wed., the people that just can't wait for the weekend go see it then, and the more casual moviegoers can see it over the weekend with less chance of sellout. Makes sense, and it's not breaking street date, it's modifiying street date for extreme cases.

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Napolean Dynamite had been in NY/LA theaters for two months before it came to the Chicago area. Garden State was a similar situation. Should gamers have to deal with this "limited release" crap too?

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What the hell are you going on about? That wouldn't happen. You're comparing with the wrong market, anyway, the model to follow is the DVD market, in which everything comes out on Tuesday, nationwide.

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Really, you can't even compare the release date standards of the movie and game industries, because their business/profit/distribution models are entirely different.

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The DVD market works a lot better than the game market. For DVDs, if there are three releases I want coming out one week, I can go on my lunch break on Tuesday and leave the store with them all, whereas in the game market I'd be told "oh, I think I saw that one in the back, but it'll take awhile for everything to be put out on the sales floor, the other is coming out thursday... ish, and the final one has been pushed back to next week. Again."

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Originally Posted by Bacon McShig

For DVDs, if there are three releases I want coming out one week, I can go on my lunch break on Tuesday and leave the store with them all, whereas in the game market I'd be told "oh, I think I saw that one in the back, but it'll take awhile for everything to be put out on the sales floor, the other is coming out thursday... ish, and the final one has been pushed back to next week. Again."

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Exactly. I've resorted to using the phone before hand. I hate that.

And companies save money by having fewer delivery days for bulk shipments instead paying for several smaller shipments several days a week. Stores that mostly just sell dvds or cds don't have that crap trickling in and building up until Tuesday. They get one or two huge shipments prior to that Tuesday. Games trickle in though. And for what? Because inefficiency is cheaper? It's not. Not only is the logistical network for distribution wasting a bunch of money, not capitalizing on that single day release where consumers, who are already in the store for dvds and/or cds equals lost money. The way it is is stupid and can't be argued for logically.

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Originally Posted by Bacon McShig

it's not breaking street date, it's modifiying street date for extreme cases.

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So movie studios can modify their release standards at their own discretion, but publishers are not allowed to do the same for the game industry?

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What the hell are you going on about? That wouldn't happen. You're comparing with the wrong market, anyway, the model to follow is the DVD market, in which everything comes out on Tuesday, nationwide.

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You are completely missing my point. The reason the DVD market is able to operate like this is because of theaters. There is no equivalent to the "movie theater" for the gaming industry, so release dates on videogames are far more important than they are for DVDs.

In most cases, if you go to the store to buy a particular DVD, you probably already saw it sometime during the 3-6 months it was available for your viewing pleasure at a nearby theater, or watched it on TV when it originally aired, or had the VHS version, etc. Having it as soon as possible is not that important. Compare that to the guy who has been waiting for Halo 2 for 2+ years and has taken November 9th off from work along with the rest of his friends. Even though the game is finished, you think he wants to wait until the following Tuesday to get to experience the game for the first time, because of some arbitrarily defined standard release day?

Plus, you are also completely ignoring the fact that DVD's of finished films are infinitely easier to produce than videogames, which are often feverishly worked on by development teams up to the 11th hour. A DVD's main selling point (the movie itself) was done months and months before it hits shelves, because it had to be done for its theater release. Everything else is just extras.