The game industry’s incompetence at scheduling has reached a new peak, with several big name games now destined to fail.
There are many reasons to delay a new game, but one that publishers always seem to ignore is that it just isn’t a good time to launch it. Movies will often have their release dates pushed back to avoid coming out at the same time as another big release but that’s a lesson the games industry has never managed to learn.
Just look at . While it’s enjoying the hype of being a long-awaited sequel, and has its diehard fans that’ll snap it up on day one, developer Remedy and publisher Epic Games are launching it the same week as .
Admittedly, nobody knew that would happen, since Sony didn’t share Spider-Man 2’s launch date till two weeks after Alan Wake 2, but that’s exactly why Remedy should move their game – and, again, exactly what any movie would do in the same position.
At Summer Game Fest, game director Kyle Rowley was asked about Alan Wake 2’s , which quickly attracted backlash from those who’d prefer to own a physical copy.
Remedy provided a few justifications, such as wanting to keep the game’s price from being too expensive, and Rowley has since added that the game being digital-only means they have more development time.
‘As creatives obviously, by going digital-only it does allow us more time to polish the game,’ Rowley told . ‘Like, a significant amount of weeks actually. Because otherwise, the game that goes on the disc, obviously it has to be playable without a patch.
‘We didn’t want to release something that we weren’t proud of basically, and that we didn’t want players to play. So hopefully this way we can give you a better version of the game.’
But delaying Alan Wake 2 a couple of extra weeks will be hugely beneficial because then it wouldn’t have to go up against Spider-Man 2 and would instead be head-to-head with WarioWare: Move It.
Spider-Man 2’s £70 price tag makes it the more expensive purchase, but it also has the benefit of being Spider-Man 2. The average consumer is going to be far more attracted to a new game starring one of the most popular and recognisable superheroes on the planet than one featuring a random bearded man.
It’s especially baffling because Remedy made the exact same mistake with the first Alan Wake, sending it out to shops the same week as Rockstar’s Red Dead Redemption, resulting in slow launch sales.
But that’s not all, that two week period in October is insane anyway, as it starts with Forza Motorsport on October 10, then two days later, Alan Wake 2 five days after that, and then Spider-Man 2 and on the same Friday, three days later. (Plus is out on October 25, five days later, which also seems to doom that.)
Granted, Nintendo is arguably just as guilty as Remedy for seeing one of Sony’s biggest exclusives of the year and thinking ‘Yeah, people would rather buy our game’ rather than wait for a quieter week and take full advantage of the lack of competition.
It’s even rumoured that will drop that same week too. If Sega has any sense, it’ll push that launch back to avoid the game’s week one sales being crippled. Although seeing sense is not necessarily a Sega speciality…
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