Gaming industry should desaturate Q4

[Roufuss]

To address your second point, it probably would. The critics (consisting of professional magazine/Web site reviewers, as well as hardcore gamers that tend to populate Web forums like this one) generally adored Beyond Good & Evil. The mainstream masses don't necessarily hate the game. Most mainstream/casual gamers simply don't have an opinion on the game, since they haven't tried it, and generally aren't even aware of its existence. Ubisoft had no TV spots for it, very few print ads, and I don't recall any demos being produced for it. Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time and XIII had all of these.

Wrong.

XIII and PoP had all of the ads, demos, and whatever else, and still flopped. None of them even managed to crack a top ten list that I was aware of.

[AaronChance]

I think it's fair to say that the companies which spend millions of dollars a year on market research know more about it than the TNL crowd. Just a hunch.

Because marketing on tombstones and getting people to name their kids Turok are brilliant ideas.

[Roufuss]

Because marketing on tombstones and getting people to name their kids Turok are brilliant ideas.

The fact you still remember those ad campaigns means they were pretty good then, hm?

[Drewbacca]

The gaming industry as a whole sucks at a lot of things.

I'm pretty sure these game companies you speak of hire contracted people or media houses to do their commercials.

[Captain Vegetable]

The fact you still remember those ad campaigns means they were pretty good then, hm?

Heh. And the fact that he probably remembers the company's name is even better.

Sometimes people forget what the aim of advertising is. It's to get you to remember a name, product, company, etc. NOT to entertain, or provide a humorus clip which you like or dislike.

Acclaim did their job wonderfully. You may have hated the concepts of the ads themselves, but I'll be damned if they didn't work.

[Agent X]

Wrong.

XIII and PoP had all of the ads, demos, and whatever else, and still flopped. None of them even managed to crack a top ten list that I was aware of.

True, but that wasn't exactly my point--only part of it. Just having ads and demos doesn't make a game sell, but it can help.

XIII fizzled out quickly--but then again, that's what often happens when you're in one of the most crowded genres on the market, specifically against Medal of Honor Rising Sun, SOCOM II, Counter-Strike, and even Ubisoft's own Rainbow Six 3.

I wouldn't label Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time a true flop, though. It sold somewhere around half a million across all systems--that's better than a lot of other multiplatform games managed. The disappointment really came from it not being the massive blockbuster that Ubisoft and the critics were hoping for. Games like Need for Speed Underground and True Crime: Streets of LA totally stole the show, and people were saddended that PoP couldn't hang in the same league when it came to sales.

Getting back to what I was saying earlier, the point was that unlike XIII and PoP, BG&E didn't even have the benefit of any TV ads or pre-release demos to help build consumer awareness. While XIII and PoP did (and still underperformed), so did NFSU and True Crime (and they sold like hotcakes). Ubisoft never really made an effort to promote BG&E like they did their other top-tier games, and that fact combined with a relatively low production run made it seem more like a self-fulfilling prophecy that the sales were going to tank anyway.

[burgundy]

I think the games listed above are just as good as what was offered the 4th quarter.

Q1 always has some decent games because of the spillover from the previous Q4. Q2 is when things really grind to a halt.

XIII and PoP had all of the ads, demos, and whatever else, and still flopped. None of them even managed to crack a top ten list that I was aware of.

Not as spectacularly...and they're probably not half the game BG&E is.

---

Anyway, as a consumer I don't care when the games come out, because I don't buy them at full price barring some sort of miracle. If Q4 saturation drives prices down quicker, then, bully for me.

Otherwise, I don't see why the gaming industry shouldn't saturate Q4 - every other entertainment industry does, whether they're geared primarily to kids or not.

[Diff-chan]

Otherwise, I don't see why the gaming industry shouldn't saturate Q4 - every other entertainment industry does, whether they're geared primarily to kids or not.

Not to mention this little fact:

Most games are sold during Christmas! This is a fact. I worked at an EB for many many years. Most people who buy games are buying them for someone else, and hmm... at what time of the year do people buy games for other people?

"Spacing out" games wont accomplish shit, because the prime selling period for games is the first 30 days its out. If you cant cut the mustard during that period your game is a flop. That sounds harsh but thats the reality of the market. So the best chance of releasing a non-flop is releasing it at the time when most customers are buying games..

In the case of Ubi Soft titles, I think they just hedged their bets on customers being most intrigued by XIII, and they lost that bet. Oh well. But nobody's convinced me that moving BG&E or PoP up to May would've made even a little bit of difference... in fact they probably would've sold worse.

If you (as in, the singular poster on TNL) would've bought it but couldn't during Christmas because of all the other games... whoop. One sale. Remember that hardCORE!!! make up at most a fraction of one percent of the gaming industry, and that number is going down.

[Roufuss]

Remember that hardCORE!!! make up at most a fraction of one percent of the gaming industry, and that number is going down.

I wish I could beat this into alot of people's heads.

[burgundy]

But nobody's convinced me that moving BG&E or PoP up to May would've made even a little bit of difference... in fact they probably would've sold worse.

Dunno about PoP, but BG&E could have gotten a lot more marketing outside of December, and given its main problem is that no one seems to know it exists, it may have helped it considerably.