Too many top-notch releases at once can cripple sales
Now that we’ve left 2003 behind us, allow me to look back on something that I find quite disconcerting. We all know that there are certain games out there that just kicked our ass; one of those remarkable achievements that makes you so enamored with the games industry that much more. We can only bestow GamingWorld X’s Game of the Year upon one single game. And despite the fact that the holidays were cluttered with tons of must-have titles, there can only be that one solitary game that is it.
Our “it” game of 2003 is Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time, scoring a very beefy 9.5. Here’s an excerpt from our review:
“There was not a single moment during Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time that I was not having fun. Just watching the Prince as I made him leap across chasms, do somersaults in the air, and launch himself off a pole through a hole in the wall was the most fun I’ve had with a game in ages.”
One would think that an endorsement like this would be more than enough to assume that this title is going to sell like hotcakes. But here’s the alarming part: It’s not! That’s right. One of the top games to be released this year isn’t selling. It hasn’t even broken Electronic Boutique’s top ten in sales. The less-than-impressive Medal of Honor: Rising Sun and the godawful (and we mean it) Enter the Matrix sold more units than Prince of Persia in 2003. There is something seriously wrong with that. Gravely. To add insult to injury, gamers aren’t even renting the game either: Prince failed to break Rentrak’s top ten console rentals as well.
I attribute this phenomenon to having way too many games released at the same time. As gamers, we all know that we’ve suffered through this. It happens almost every year, and the more mainstream games get, the more this could happen. You know, when you get to that point when you feel overwhelmed by all the great games that are simply begging to be played. You may even feel that you can’t properly enjoy one particular game because there are five others calling out for you. Yeah, we know how it is. It’s almost… bad. And despite the lack of a truly console-defining killer app, 2003 was a great year for games, as we’ve seen a great variety of triple A titles released for all three consoles.
Had Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time been released earlier in the year, maybe it would’ve been selling better.
You’ve got three consoles out there, all vying for the top position. Between them, you’ve got over 200 games being released, all within a three-month period. And these aren’t just any games; these are top-shelf titles that publishers have been saving back all year long, hoping to cash in on all that holiday spending. But instead of hitting the mother load, many publishers have found that their critically acclaimed titles aren’t faring well at retail, leaving these companies scratching their heads wondering what went wrong.
Since we’re talking about Prince of Persia, let’s use the game’s publisher (Ubi Soft) as an example of what can happen. Ubi Soft had a great year. In fact, if there was an award that went to a publisher for having an absolute killer lineup, it’d have went to Ubi Soft effortlessly. The publisher released not only The Sands of Time around the holidays, but other high-profile titles from the publisher also hit shelves at roughly the same period, such as Beyond Good and Evil, XIII, and Rainbow Six 3. Most of these games turned out rather well, but all of them were high-profile games; games that are destined to attract attention. In addition, these games are being released by the very same publisher of the highly acclaimed Tom Clancy’s Splinter Cell, so if Ubi Soft played their cards correctly, they’d have one hell of a year with each game they released. But instead, like most publishers in this business, Ubi Soft blew their whole load on one three-month period, effectively shooting themselves in the foot more than anything else.
Everyone knows that it’s the sequels are selling the most, despite the industry’s cry for original content. Worse, once we get it (like Prince of Persia and other underrated games like Ico), they don’t sell. Is it any wonder then why publishers don’t want to take any chances with original games? When they do take the risk, no one buys the game. However, if publishers looked at this business at a slightly different angle, they may be able to turn that ill fortune around.
That different angle is very simple: Perhaps we’ve reached the point where the industry should start looking at a 12-month release calendar. If nothing else, history has shown that quality games can sell at any time of the year, and I’m willing to bet that most games that are of triple A status are just as capable of being million-sellers in June as they are in November. We’ve all experienced the holiday rush, and most of us can collectively agree that while nice at first, gamers quickly become weighed down in quality releases, forcing many a consumer to choose just one great game, leaving everything else to the wayside. Furthermore, consumers who run into those high-quality $20 games find them to hard to refuse. Launching a high-profile game at a different time of the year can certainly increase the sales of a game that otherwise would’ve been buried in the overcrowded holiday period. Then maybe – just maybe – we can see some of our favorite releases above Enter the Matrix on the sales charts, systematically encouraging more original ideas and less unpolished turds. Don’t we all deserve more for our $50 after all?
