The Summer Drought

The summer period can often lead to drought, with pulsating heat and a lack of precipitation combining to diminish our precious source of liquid sustenance.

“Where is he going with this?” I hear you ask.

Well, as far as videogame releases go, a different sort of drought rears its ugly head year after year. Store shelves are often barren in the summer, with publishers gearing up for the Christmas period that, quite frankly, can be a little overwhelming.

Rock Band 4. Rainbow Six: Siege. Assassin’s Creed: Syndicate. The Nathan Drake Collection. Halo 5: Guardians. Fallout 4. Rise of the Tomb Raider. Star Wars Battlefront. XCOM 2. Call of Duty: Black Ops III. Need for Speed.

Eleven games, all of which will be releasing over a six week period this winter.

Spring receives similarly claustrophobic treatment, with Uncharted 4, Dark Souls 3, Quantum Break, Dishonored 2, Mirror’s Edge, Recore, Ratchet and Clank, Street Fighter V and more set to release in early 2016.

Loads of games! Surely that’s good, right? Well, sort of.

Christmas is the golden period. The sons, daughters, spouses, and even the elders, who will wake up on Christmas morning with a PS4 or Xbox One under the tree (and the unlucky bastards who get a Wii U), will want the year’s biggest and best releases to go with it, and developers will happily oblige.

Up in the offices of EA, Ubisoft and Activision, numbers are crunched, complicated maths is done and forecasts are…forecast. Men in suits strategise, theorise and compromise over the assignation of their biggest releases, hoping that their decision is the positive catalyst for financial success. Thankfully, we’ve started to see a greater dissemination of games throughout the year; undermining the antiquated idea that gamers mostly buy their games over a three month period. Better yet, games that have bucked the trend have been rewarded with overwhelming success.

“But people go on holiday and spend time outdoors in the summer!” Try telling that to CD Projekt Red. The Witcher 3 launched on May 19th to critical acclaim (we really liked it, too), and with no other significant AAA release that month, The Witcher 3 dominated, both in coverage and in sales. Within two weeks, it had sold four million copies; impressive for a game that, despite being reasonably popular, is a couple of steps below Call of Duty and Assassin’s Creed on the fame ladder.

A little over a month later, the conclusion to Rocksteady’s Arkham trilogy launched. The Dark Knight punched and kicked his way onto the scene, with no other videogame character around to steal his thunder. Subsequently, Batman: Arkham Knight became the biggest videogame release of the year, (we loved this one, also). Watch Dogs, The Last of Us and The Last of Us: Remastered released in May, June and August respectively, and they, too, follow the same pattern; Joel, Ellie and Aiden Pearce stood unchallenged as they flew off the shelves and into the hands of many a gleeful gamer.

But it’s not just the AAA blockbusters that benefit. Smaller titles have made the most of an ‘off-peak’ release. A November release date for Wolfenstein: The New Order would have seen B.J. Blazkowicz stomped under the irrefutable might of Kevin Spacey, not to mention the relentless advertisement campaigns that are a direct consequence of the time period. A May release allowed it to break free from the shackles of subservience and sell more than it could ever hope to achieve, should it have released in the winter. And Valiant Hearts? It would have easily been relegated beneath the cacophony of noise generated by the year’s biggest titles; a June release saved it from this fate.

No one is asking for fewer games, and we’re all au fait as to the commercial benefits of winter releases, but I’m of the belief that gamers, and the games themselves, would perhaps benefit from a better amortisation across a 12 month spread. If Arkham Knight doesn’t tickle your fancy, and if RPG’s aren’t your thing, the wait from March to October is an excruciatingly long one. Instead, my wallet is left quivering at the onslaught that’s due to come its way in a few months.

November 10th perhaps best captures my frustration. Fallout 4 or Rise of the Tomb Raider?

It’s the Sophie’s Choice of videogames.