Delay of Game

I should apologize for my disregard of PLAY READ WRITE over the past few days. I've been doing a fair bit of not gaming with lots of responsibilities around the house. My brother picked up Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars so I'll most likely be reviewing that next, and I've been working my way up to 100 matches in Battlefield 1943, but what I wanted to talk about today is about the recent slew of games that are being pushed back into 2010.

From Bioshock 2 to Splinter Cell Conviction, games are being delayed from the holiday season into the next year left and right. These are huge tentpole releases that developers and publishers plan on selling millions of, and I hope that moving them to a less crowded time of the year will bring them that financial success.

Let's face it, games like Halo: ODST and Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 are huge dominant games that crush all who stand in their way. These names are so big that the little guys have to scamper out of the way as fast as possible, and for good reason. We want these titles to do well, so long as they are of good quality, but we also want smaller titles that are still ingenous in their own right to do well this year too. Sometimes the best way for games like Splinter Cell or Singularity (another shooter from Activision) to do well this year, is to be moved to next year.

Look at Capcom's recent strategy. This year, Capcom released Resident Evil 5 and Street Fighter IV, their two (arguably) biggest franchises, in the early part of this year, and each of those titles still produced big sales. Why can't more games be published in the rest of the calendar year? High volume sales are possible if the titles are quality.

In any case, I'm very happy to hear of these delays. It may mean that we have to wait a little while longer for titles we want to play badly, but it will mean that new franchises can be born, new risks can be made, and success can be had in the business sector of video gaming.