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Holiday Onslaught, Time for Naught

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For years gamers have pleaded with publishers to more evenly distribute game releases throughout the year; asking for a steady sprinkle of AAA titles throughout the year instead of the monsoon we’ve come to expect at year’s end. Perhaps having heard this call, we’re not so inundated by great games this holiday season, or at least not as much as say, 2007 or 2008.

ilm-AssassinsCreed2-04im in ur game library assassinatin’ ur tiems lol

That’s not to say that there aren’t enough great games coming out this holiday season to keep you busy for a while, I know that I’ll have a queue built up when the season comes to an end, and that’s just the way it’s always been. Holiday ushers in a fistful of new titles which take up your next few months’ free time. However, unlike years past, 2010 has highly anticipated titles releasing every month, leaving little time to take a breath between the full-steam-ahead holiday release schedule and the first quarter’s newfound vigor. Check out this schedule:

  • 1/12: Army of Two: The 40th Day
  • 1/26: Mass Effect 2
  • 2/9: Bioshock 2
  • 2/9: Dante’s Inferno
  • 2/23: Lost Planet 2
  • 2/23: Splinter Cell: Conviction
  • 3/1: LEGO Harry Potter: Years 1-4
  • 3/2: Battlefield: Bad Company 2
  • 3/9: Final Fantasy XIII

*Dates from Gamestop.com, who know more about release dates than I do … they don’t tell me much here.

That’s just a brief outline of the big titles. Needless to say, this doesn’t leave a lot of time to clear out the queue as it stands today. For me, this is a problem which is causing me legitimate concern, as I might miss out on more than a few games. I still have significant playtime left in Assassin’s Creed 2, Modern Warfare 2, Borderlands, NHL 10, DiRT 2, Fight Night Round 4 and haven’t even cracked DJ Hero, Forza 3, Left 4 Dead 2 or Rock Band Beatles. I’ve constructed the graph below to illustrate my quagmire (see figure 1.1).

imageFigure 1.1

Granted, that graph may be statistically unsound and completely irrelevant, but like Santa Claus, its spirit lives on inside us all. There aren’t enough hours in the day to knock out all of these games while more and more will be piling up as time goes on.

So what’s really changed? Are there just that many more good games being produced, or will we see a lull in the summer months followed by a resurgence in the Fall? Are we simply at a point where there will never again be “nothing to do” so long as an Xbox 360 is in the house? Maybe, who knows. All we can say for certain is that this is a good problem.

Comments

  • Anonymous
    December 13, 2009
    The comment has been removed

  • Anonymous
    December 14, 2009
    No corporate spin, just an observation from a gamer who was bored and wanted to write words on the internet. So far as I know, those are are serious release dates, otherwise I'll look like a shill as you suggest, and that's not the business I'm in. I do accept the fact that first Tuesday of year X is generally a placeholder release date, or such was the standard practice for some time. However, I do not believe that will be the case here. If it is, I owe you a coke.

  • Anonymous
    December 18, 2009
    The one thing about putting things out over the Holidays is that it really seperates the best from the alomost good enough. When I am asking for a gift I can not ask for my top 5 picks. I have to just ask for a few.  So it forces me to pick and choose. The down side is that it takes a while to get feedback from other users for me to make my best choice.

  • Anonymous
    February 18, 2010
    why capcom didnt put two dvd in lost planet 2, they cut material of lost planet 2, and they will give us a incomplete version of lp2. Source http://www.3djuegos.com/noticias-ver/109846/capcom-admite-recortes-de-contenido-en-la-version-x360-de/