Comments on: Industry attempt at self destruction

By: Bruce

Bruce — Wed, 05 Aug 2009 11:16:50 +0000

It looks like someone is listening!:

http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?story=24715

“…………..EA CEO John Riccitiello doesn’t want to repeat the same mistakes this holiday. He noted in an earnings call on Tuesday, “It was a very difficult retail environment [in 2008]“, and EA released new properties “right on top of some very strong competitive launches.” He added that he was “less than pleased” with EA’s marketing during holiday 2008…………..”

By: Steven Leicester

Steven Leicester — Fri, 17 Jul 2009 16:42:17 +0000

So true – there is a severe lack of quality at the moment. Like most gamers I’m waiting for the killer titles such as COD5, Bioshock 2 and Forza 3.

What is there to play in the meantime? Exactly – not very much! I’ve even started playing Fallout 3 again to combat the tripe the games companies push out over the summer months.

The last game I purchased at full retail price was Resident Evil 5. I’ve had more fun playing the re-release of Monkey Island on XBLA, than anything the £40 game market can hit me with at the moment.

By: Bruce

Bruce — Fri, 17 Jul 2009 12:03:29 +0000

When I was at Codemasters I tried to get all our big announcements out Pre E3. Not only for the reasons you state, but also to get the right people to come to our booth. Creating noise before the show was a good traffic generator.

However the volume of news stories generated by a publisher like Codemasters is so big that I was generating two press releases a week throughout the year. So the E3 thing was just about arranging the press release shedule to get the big stories out in that slack time you talk about before the show.

By: Ian Osborne

Ian Osborne — Fri, 17 Jul 2009 11:51:40 +0000

“Yet people earn wages all year round”

That’s something the industry has never really understood. It seems to be stuck in the late Eighties and early Nineties, when games were released in Q4 so the kids could get their console cartridges for Christmas. Things have moved on now, and it’s time the industry woke up to the fact that today’s gamers have a disposable income.

Incidentally, when I was a games hack, I found E3 had a similar effect. You could guarantee the issue put to bed before the show would be crying out for news and previews, as the entire industry saved its announcements for E3. This made sense for the big players, who could guarantee decent coverage in the magazines’ big E3 issues. But smaller publishers could’ve made a publicity killing by announcing their games a month earlier, getting lots of magazine space as editors struggle to fill the pre-E3 issue. Instead, they hung on and saw their games choked out of the press by the bigger offerings which were also announced at E3. It seems everybody wants to pretend they’re the big boys and that their games are AAA releases, even when neither are even remotely true.

I’d be interested to hear your thoughts and experiences on this.