An Inconvenient Truth — ‘09 Holiday Releases Are Endangered
Overfished waters? Melting polar ice? No, the hidden shame of our ecosystem is the virtual disappearance of 2009 holiday releases, Noted ecologists LoadingReadyRun have put together this documentary on the plight of a species no one’s talking about.
Let’s not spoil any of the punchlines, so, enjoy this and pay attention as you do so. Especially to the graph on the whiteboard. And that scientist, something tells me she gets corporate funding to say there’s not a problem here. But any fool can see the crisis when BioShock 2, Red Dead Redemption and others are, quite visibly, driven out of their natural ecosystem.
Save Our Games [LoadingReadyRun]
Comments (AU Comments | US Comments)
@shredmanifesto: I sure hope so :/
TheVegetarianBurgerKing
Fine with me. With all my christmas money I can look forward to spring. Super Mario Galaxy 2 FF13 and Pokemon HG/SS(hopefully?) and some more I can't remember. So yeah, I'll be fine with AC2, Muramasa, Demon's Souls and maybe some Persona 4. BRING IT ON HOLIDAY SEASON..or not.
TheVegetarianBurgerKing
I'd rather have a game be delayed and done right than pushed out early just to cash in on the holiday season. Case and point, Mass Effect. Great game but every interior cave or hideout, no matter what planet you landed on was exactly the same! :o
CommenterKeen
This was well done.
They need a follow up documentary about the overpopulation of new and big games next year released outside of the holiday hunting season and the effects on the gaming ecosystem.
Yes, I probably just stole their thunder, but just in case they didn't have the idea yet, here it is.
@panikt: The same things happen all the time in movie releases. The studios look to see when big releases are coming out and then plan accordingly. When HP6 got moved back to the summer, another movie jumped into it's spot and moved up a week but no studio was going to release a movie the same week, at least not one targeting the same demographic.
Furthermore, while movie releases certainly spike around Christmas and Summer they are still spread out across the year more than video games have been. I think video games are just beginning to shift to a more "natural" release schedule.
Finally it has been a double whammy this year. After 2008 some of the publishers that had "runner up" games who lost out to bigger releases admitted that they needed to rethink when they released their games in relation to others and then the recession hit full force making people even more nervous. So a lot of people were already planning to mix it up and the economy sent people running towards the brighter prospects of 2010.
BGFUSAB
I'm actually fine with the slow holiday season. But now I've got to start saving for the spring releases like Ace Attorney Investigations.
@ryosen: Personally I'd rather have a nice steady stream of games throughout the year rather than feeling assaulted at Christmas. I feel like that has been my 2009 so far anyways as far as RPGs are concerned. Atlus had a lot of released during the 2nd quarter.
BGFUSAB
Pfft, I'm looking forward to quite a few games this fall. :|
Hah, I thought the narration sounded like Yahtzee.
Anyway, as fourth quarters go, this one is still pretty good. It just dosn't have the same huge number of big releases as last year. Which makes sense, in a way. If I was a publisher, I would not want anything of mine releasing the same time as Modern Warfare 2. No sir.
Perfect time to announce some RPGs then.
PS3 Tales of Vesperia US port anyone?
@Blyr: Borderlands gets my funding as well.
Comes 2010 there will another endangered species on the list....my poor old little piggy bank.
He will surely be missed (T~T)
Hooray! Lrr getting coverage in kotaku!
KidoftheThird
@Anshrew: I think the narrator was.
I remember in the SNES days when NO games would come out during summer.
I hated those days.
@panikt: It's not cowardice, it's being realistic.
If you had a game, would you release it near the same time as a guaranteed blockbuster game, especially if it was the same genre, in which your game would be run over and forgotten?
I hope to think not, unless of course you're an idiot.
Damn that MW2.
he is just too good of a hunter, he has ether consumed or scared off almost any competitor's.
Expect to see it become and Invasive species come winter time, when it will be Seeking the inside's of PS3's, Xbox 360 and PC's for warmth.
Wii owners must also watch out for it's weaker cousin, CoD4. while he does not pack the bite he did 2 years ago, he is still a threat to your free time.
@ryosen: I am all for it, kind of, so long as the developer uses the "extra" 4 months to further polish / make the game even better
@[ZTF]Is my Name: I did enjoy it, didn't laugh out loud either, but found it amusing. Actually it is the kind of thing you could show to a non-gamer contemporary and explain things a bit to them.
Caduceus
Really funny video, I especially enjoyed the graph.
I knew I recognized that voice! IT"S YAHTZEE!
@Anshrew: Yes.
@Mister Jack is credit to team!: Yeah, I didn't laugh, but it was very amusing.
I realize that it's a parody and all but I really hope that people don't start complaining that game releases are being spread throughout the year. I've little doubt that they'll be the same people that were complaining that last year's games all came out in December.
Was that Yahtzee from the Escaptist?
Anshrew
@Maldron:
Well considering that November/December are the biggest months for any retail product I think it sucks for a lot of companies to miss the Holiday season. Sometimes it can be good, but with all these games going to January-June 2010 more stuff will get overlooked.
Things will normalize by 2011 I assume...
MooglesInMyFace
I dunno why, but I thought this was really cute.
I'm sorry Laura, but that chart is incorrect. The line should be at a "fuck ton" before 2009 and going down to "a lot" for 2009.
I don't know why people think there are no games this year when there are in fact a lot coming out for different systems (unless you're whining about the high profile games aka Bayonetta (that's high profile? *shrugs*).
If we learned anything from the past year, is that spreading the games throughout the year is a good thing. Now about early 2010... damn.
P.S Never trust anyone named "Bert."
The first Yahtzee related video I've been amused by for awhile now.
All I can say is, well done.
Game publishers are such cowards. Don't tell me they are all afraid of Modern Warfare 2.
If the situation goes on like this. I might just have to import FF13 for real.
panikt
Lmfao, "Narrated by Yahtzee Croshaw... that's me".
Hilarious video, especially MW2 vs. Borderlands.. (although my money is on Borderlands.. literally)
So long as they're capable of thriving in the new "ecosystem," the only thing we really lose out on is the ability to have relatives buy everything we were gonna buy for us.