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Mass_Pincup · Oct 8, 2016

ArkhamFantasy said:
It was less than a week away from another game from the same studio.

That makes even less sense. Would you prefer to calibalize sales from one team in the studio you own to another one or would you prefer losing that money to 3rd party partner?

It would be better if they released it in a period where the PS4 isn't getting a lot of games but that's not the case here.

EatinOlives said:
It's really odd seeing the Pavlovian "it's for the better!" and "game needed room to breathe!" responses that follow every single delay at this point, even when the new date is either not any better or decidedly worse.

Feels like a coping mechanism.

The "great I'll have time to play it that way!" is also incredibly funny to me, like you're not obligated to buy the game day one.

mullet2000 · Oct 8, 2016

Robert at Zeboyd Games said:
Seems kind of reaching to say that they're all going for the same group.

Anime Superheroine game
Remake/Collection of Disney/SE Action/RPGs
Horror Game
GTA in Japan
Action/RPG

I can see some overlap between KH & Tales but you're talking about long-running RPG series with dedicated fanbases - regardless of when you release, the diehard fans are going to buy day 1 and everybody else is going to ignore it or buy it on sale a few months later anyway. For that matter, that applies somewhat to all of these games - they're all sequels and they're all single-player games so even if you are a fan of all of them, it's not like you're going to miss out if you buy some of them later.

Personally, I guess you could call me a Japanese game fan and Gravity Rush 2 is a must-have, Tales is a get on sale, and everything else on that list is a skip.

The fact of the matter is that so many games come out these days that you have to release at the same time other games come out. At best, you can try to avoid the heavy hitters in your genre, but even then there's no guarantee since release dates get changed all the time.

I wasn't meaning to imply they're the same genre, they aren't. But I think there's a lot of overlap between the players of those games.

I wonder if there's a way to parce trophy data or something and see what the overlap is with previous games in all of these series. I really think it'd be fairly high.

Robert at Zeboyd Games · Oct 8, 2016

Also, on the matter of Tales of Berseria, when would be a better release date? You can't release it in November because of FFXV, you can't release in December because December is a bad month to release (and FFXV), and you can't release in February because Persona 5 is going to steal your thunder. January is pretty much it unless you want to go back to March. At least they have the advantage of being on PC when the other games they're competing with on consoles aren't.

Although I'm sure Kingdom Hearts will sell really well, I have a hard time thinking that a game with 2.8 in the title is going to sell well to people who aren't already series fans. I had to look up a wikipedia entry just to find out what it was (I thought it was a KH2 remake, but it turns out that it's a collection of a remake for a 3DS game, a prologue side-story for KH3, and a 1 hour movie).

Version 3.0 · Oct 8, 2016

Aurongel said:
Whatever sales they lose by cannibalization I absolutely promise you is offset by what they make by getting their game out a month before Black Friday.

If they didn't have market data to back this up then they wouldn't do it.

Some of those examples listed are real head scratchers though.

I can guarantee this is not true. The argument that "they know what they're doing" is a pretty bad one, considering the dismal failures that the market has seen over the years. Back when we used to get detailed sales data, I could have given you some figures. I mean games released in November that literally didn't hit 5-digit sales figures in the US. I think there were even one or two that didn't even hit 4 digits. There's just no way they could have sold any worse had they been released with less competition.

The videogame market is often compared to the movie market. It doesn't deserve it. The movie market does a pretty competent job, overall, of spacing its releases. Some movie buffs might disagree with that, but at the very least it does a vastly better job of it than the game market. It's one of several things it does much better (another being addressing all avenues of revenue and price point markets).

The videogame market has been "release every single game in Q4" since it became a corporate market instead of a startup one, and in 3 decades it's barely budged from that self-fulfilling short-sighted model. The argument has always been "most sales occur then", and the blatantly obvious reply is "yes, because most releases occur then". It might have made sense when videogames really were a subset of the toy market, but if the industry really wants to grow up and put on its big boy wannabe movie market pants, it should realize that its market is not just the Christmas shopper market any more. Nor does releasing in June preclude selling your product in November.

Kill3r7 · Oct 8, 2016

Leondexter said:
I can guarantee this is not true. The argument that "they know what they're doing" is a pretty bad one, considering the dismal failures that the market has seen over the years. Back when we used to get detailed sales data, I could have given you some figures. I mean games released in November that literally didn't hit 5-digit sales figures in the US. I think there were even one or two that didn't even hit 4 digits. There's just no way they could have sold any worse had they been released with less competition.

The videogame market is often compared to the movie market. It doesn't deserve it. The movie market does a pretty competent job, overall, of spacing its releases. Some movie buffs might disagree with that, but at the very least it does a vastly better job of it than the game market. It's one of several things it does much better (another being addressing all avenues of revenue and price point markets).

The videogame market has been "release every single game in Q4" since it became a corporate market instead of a startup one, and in 3 decades it's barely budged from that self-fulfilling short-sighted model. The argument has always been "most sales occur then", and the blatantly obvious reply is "yes, because most releases occur then". It might have made sense when videogames really were a subset of the toy market, but if the industry really wants to grow up and put on its big boy wannabe movie market pants, it should realize that its market is not just the Christmas shopper market any more. Nor does releasing in June preclude selling your product in November.

I agree with the gist of your argument and think the industry needs to release more big titles throughout the year but what was the last game to release in the spring to sell gangbusters (Top5 games sold for the year). I guess this year we had Overwatch and maybe The Division but that is the exception to the rule.

Crossing Eden · Oct 8, 2016

Gravity Rush 2 - Jan 20th
Kingdom Hearts 2.8 HD - Jan 24th
Resident Evil 7 - Jan 24th
Yakuza 0 - Jan 24th
Tales of Berseria - Jan 24th

Take into account in the West that RE7 is way more hyped and well known than the others especially with it's western inspired youtube/twitch streamer friendly POV.

RowdyReverb · Oct 8, 2016

The advantages of their desired release window must outweigh the risk of lost sales to competitors. I mean, they have entire departments of presumably intelligent people devoted to figuring things like this out. Maybe in the grand scheme of sales factors it doesn't matter as much as one might expect?

mullet2000 · Oct 8, 2016

RowdyReverb said:
The advantages of their desired release window must outweigh the risk of lost sales to competitors. I mean, they have entire departments of presumably intelligent people devoted to figuring things like this out. Maybe in the grand scheme of sales factors it doesn't matter as much as one might expect?

That's what I'm thinking, I'd just love to see the numbers. Obviously no company wants to send their product to die but with the January situation specifically I'm having a hard time seeing how it benefits anyone involved.

ScatheZombie · Oct 8, 2016

There's a number of factors that go into when a game is released.

For starters, in NA/EU territories, November and December alone account for over half of all game sales in the year. 2 months is +50% of all units sold - generally for both games and hardware. So it shouldn't be any surprise that so many studios target holiday release. In some cases, releasing in the holiday against a competitor will actually net more sales than releasing in June against nothing, simply because June accounts for so few yearly sales by comparison. In Japan, however, that +50% month is... January - which explains a stacked month of JRPGs. And launch window sales (generally first 6 weeks) are more important than overall yearly sales to most studios - since that's how future budgets and bonus structures are built. Sales in November from a game released in June is basically all publisher profit with the development studio getting almost nothing.

After that, game publishers don't have the patience that film studios have. In general, a game is shipped immediately upon completion - or before it's even done. There isn't a major studio I can think of that will sit on a finished product for more than a couple of weeks - whereas I've seen film studios sit on completed products for months to have better release windows. So, a lot of times, the game ships when it's done and its release date is less 'planned' than it might appear.

And that's without considering that I have yet to work on a project that actually hit its original release date. One missed it by 6 months. Another missed it by 2 years. The initial release window might have been empty from competition, but a 6 month delay could put you up against a major title.

Then there's also the fact that studios are generally setting their release dates and production schedules without knowledge of exactly when their competitors will launch. Release date announcements don't happen the second a launch window is determined in-house. Internal dates are set months, sometimes years before an announcement is made. So when your competitor announces their release date is the same as yours, the internal dialogue is more "well, shit" than "Oh, well, we better not launch then" - primarily because the internal milestone date (one that affects bonus compensation among other things) has already been set even if you haven't publicly announced it yet. You have to hit that date regardless of what happens with the rest of the market.

On top of all that, there's a lot less overlap between major titles than I suspect most GAFers think. The market majority doesn't buy that many titles a year. Your average gaming consumer gets one or two titles per year, per genre. It doesn't matter if you release against COD or not to them - they are buying only one game or the other (or both) for the whole year, regardless. Major competition in a down month like June might have an small impact, but in the holidays it's really a non-factor. The issue is less about releasing the same day as the competition from sales perspective and more about competing with their marketing blitz in the same month. You don't lose sales because another game released the same day so much as you lose sales because a competitor with a larger marketing budget outspent your product into relative oblivion.

It's a lot more complicated than simply "Don't release the same week as CoD, idiot!"

Leondexter said:
I can guarantee this is not true.

No, you can't. Because you're wrong.

DirtyLarry · Oct 8, 2016

There's a very simple answer actually (for this time of year).
All of the games from this moment on are considered Holiday releases. Any game released is in for the long haul, meaning they expect sales to carry up and until Christmas.

So really they do not care very much about what day games are released during this time of year. And with pretty good reason.

Iva Demilcol · Oct 8, 2016

ScatheZombie said:
There's a number of factors that go into when a game is released.

For starters, in NA/EU territories, November and December alone account for over half of all game sales in the year. 2 months is +50% of all units sold - generally for both games and hardware. So it shouldn't be any surprise that so many studios target holiday release. In some cases, releasing in the holiday against a competitor will actually net more sales than releasing in June against nothing, simply because June accounts for so few yearly sales by comparison. In Japan, however, that +50% month is... January - which explains a stacked month of JRPGs. And launch window sales (generally first 6 weeks) are more important than overall yearly sales to most studios - since that's how future budgets and bonus structures are built. Sales in November from a game released in June is basically all publisher profit with the development studio getting almost nothing.

After that, game publishers don't have the patience that film studios have. In general, a game is shipped immediately upon completion - or before it's even done. There isn't a major studio I can think of that will sit on a finished product for more than a couple of weeks - whereas I've seen film studios sit on completed products for months to have better release windows. So, a lot of times, the game ships when it's done and its release date is less 'planned' than it might appear.

And that's without considering that I have yet to work on a project that actually hit its original release date. One missed it by 6 months. Another missed it by 2 years. The initial release window might have been empty from competition, but a 6 month delay could put you up against a major title.

Then there's also the fact that studios are generally setting their release dates and production schedules without knowledge of exactly when their competitors will launch. Release date announcements don't happen the second a launch window is determined in-house. Internal dates are set months, sometimes years before an announcement is made. So when your competitor announces their release date is the same as yours, the internal dialogue is more "well, shit" than "Oh, well, we better not launch then" - primarily because the internal milestone date (one that affects bonus compensation among other things) has already been set even if you haven't publicly announced it yet. You have to hit that date regardless of what happens with the rest of the market.

On top of all that, there's a lot less overlap between major titles than I suspect most GAFers think. The market majority doesn't buy that many titles a year. Your average gaming consumer gets one or two titles per year, per genre. It doesn't matter if you release against COD or not to them - they are buying only one game or the other (or both) for the whole year, regardless. Major competition in a down month like June might have an small impact, but in the holidays it's really a non-factor. The issue is less about releasing the same day as the competition from sales perspective and more about competing with their marketing blitz in the same month. You don't lose sales because another game released the same day so much as you lose sales because a competitor with a larger marketing budget outspent your product into relative oblivion.

It's a lot more complicated than simply "Don't release the same week as CoD, idiot!"

Pretty interesting and informative post but now I just have one question... How do you explain that preorders for Persona 5 increased when SE announced the delay of FFXV? Isn't that an indication that the release of some games cannibalizes the sales of others?

Aters · Oct 8, 2016

Releasing RotTR the same day as Fallout 4 is still the most stupid thing.

ArkhamFantasy · Oct 8, 2016

Aters said:
Releasing RotTR the same day as Fallout 4 is still the most stupid thing.

That was a contractual obligation iirc. It wasnt intentional.

MatrixMan.EXE · Oct 8, 2016

It's annoying for gamers, but at the end of the day, the competition between the games you've listed there is arbitrary. I can assure you Square Enix isn't looking at the Resident Evil VII release date and thinking, oh shit, we should delay KH 2.8. The amount of people who are interested in buying Gravity Rush 2, Resident Evil VII, Yakuza Zero and KH2.8 rather than just one of them is probably relatively small outside of places like NeoGAF.

Also it's silly to act as if all of those publishers got together and decided to release those games on the same day for shits and giggles. The majority of the time, most studios have absolutely no clue when another is going to release a videogame and if every developer had to compensate for another game coming out on a prospective release date, nothing would get released on time. EA releasing Titanfall 2 so close to BF1 and right before Infinite Warfare/Modern Warfare remastered is bone-headed though. They will suffer.

Orayn · Oct 8, 2016

ScatheZombie said:
There's a number of factors that go into when a game is released.

For starters, in NA/EU territories, November and December alone account for over half of all game sales in the year. 2 months is +50% of all units sold - generally for both games and hardware. So it shouldn't be any surprise that so many studios target holiday release. In some cases, releasing in the holiday against a competitor will actually net more sales than releasing in June against nothing, simply because June accounts for so few yearly sales by comparison. In Japan, however, that +50% month is... January - which explains a stacked month of JRPGs. And launch window sales (generally first 6 weeks) are more important than overall yearly sales to most studios - since that's how future budgets and bonus structures are built. Sales in November from a game released in June is basically all publisher profit with the development studio getting almost nothing.

After that, game publishers don't have the patience that film studios have. In general, a game is shipped immediately upon completion - or before it's even done. There isn't a major studio I can think of that will sit on a finished product for more than a couple of weeks - whereas I've seen film studios sit on completed products for months to have better release windows. So, a lot of times, the game ships when it's done and its release date is less 'planned' than it might appear.

And that's without considering that I have yet to work on a project that actually hit its original release date. One missed it by 6 months. Another missed it by 2 years. The initial release window might have been empty from competition, but a 6 month delay could put you up against a major title.

Then there's also the fact that studios are generally setting their release dates and production schedules without knowledge of exactly when their competitors will launch. Release date announcements don't happen the second a launch window is determined in-house. Internal dates are set months, sometimes years before an announcement is made. So when your competitor announces their release date is the same as yours, the internal dialogue is more "well, shit" than "Oh, well, we better not launch then" - primarily because the internal milestone date (one that affects bonus compensation among other things) has already been set even if you haven't publicly announced it yet. You have to hit that date regardless of what happens with the rest of the market.

On top of all that, there's a lot less overlap between major titles than I suspect most GAFers think. The market majority doesn't buy that many titles a year. Your average gaming consumer gets one or two titles per year, per genre. It doesn't matter if you release against COD or not to them - they are buying only one game or the other (or both) for the whole year, regardless. Major competition in a down month like June might have an small impact, but in the holidays it's really a non-factor. The issue is less about releasing the same day as the competition from sales perspective and more about competing with their marketing blitz in the same month. You don't lose sales because another game released the same day so much as you lose sales because a competitor with a larger marketing budget outspent your product into relative oblivion.

It's a lot more complicated than simply "Don't release the same week as CoD, idiot!"

No, you can't. Because you're wrong.

I always feel bad when you make great posts like this, because so many people will ignore you and pat themselves on the back for being such amazing armchair experts.

tearsintherain · Oct 8, 2016

Yeah I feel bad when obviously hard worked on games seem to be sent out to die, and while I still really think Titanfall 2 should have been delayed due to competition and the fact that alpha was quite bad, I can understand why EA is pushing it. It lets them blunt (in theory) some of the COD fanbase by having two offerings that cover all bases - BF1 for the more hardcore and "sick of future war" crowd, T2 for those who love that style of FPS. Without T2 they are just giving up that segment to COD. There are definitely millions of people who only buy 1-2 of these games a year, and they depend on friends and relatives to "join the crowd" and buy the popular game.

On the other hand I really think most people, when given the choice between Infinite Warfare and T2, are going to choose IW especially when it includes Zombies, multiplayer, campaign, ranked, private matches, co-op (i think?), AND modern warfare remaster for an extra $20. I don't even really know yet what Titanfall 2 has other than campaign and multiplayer, and I even have the game on pre order.

I guess if IW reviews really badly and Titanfall 2 reviews really well a bunch of streamers and gamers will play that but I really don't believe that will happen.

Son Of Sparda · Oct 8, 2016

TheSpoiler said:
Well, it depends on the hardcore, the Yakuza fans, and newcomers. I don't think enough hardcore gamers are going to significantly impact Yakuza, Yakuza fans are gonna buy it regardless, and people's taste for Japanese games can just include an action brawler and not the other games. I plan on getting RE7 and Yakuza but I plan on saving for both. I wonder if there's some studies on this.

Unfortunately I don't think the current Yakuza fanbase is big enough to warrant the sales needed to justifie the cost of localizing the games. That's one of the biggest problem of the series in the west. That and the fact that most people don't know what Yakuza actually is.

I'm sure there are lots of people out there who think this is some Japanese GTA/Mafia clone-

Robert at Zeboyd Games said:
GTA in Japan

What?

"GTA in Japan" is factually the most inaccurate perception of Yakuza series among public and I blame Sega for that.

You know what Yakuza is? It's a Japanese crime drama action stylish 3D brawler with many JRPG elements, set in a small yet dense sandbox environment.

YAKUZA IS NOT GTA!

This is Yakuza:

Come on guys, this is something different. Give it a try.

Acerac · Oct 8, 2016

family_guy said:
Who cares if your competitor is releasing a game around the same time you are unless you don't have faith in your product?

People who understand the realities of the market?

SephLuis · Oct 8, 2016

Son Of Sparda said:
"GTA in Japan" is factually the most inaccurate perception of Yakuza series among public and I blame Sega for that.

You know what Yakuza is? It's a Japanese crime drama action stylish 3D brawler with many JRPG elements, set in a small yet dense sandbox environment.

YAKUZA IS NOT GTA!

If I had the photoshop skills I would make one of those What I Played/ What I expected / What I got for the Yakuza series.

Put what I expected GTA + Japan and What I got put everything that's awesome in the series. There's a lot of people that still make the GTA Japan mistake.

jrcbandit · Oct 8, 2016

Do many people really care about KH 2.8? It isn't KH 3 which will be huge, it's just a remake of a not very well received 3DS entry, some cutscene movie thing, and a prologue for KH3. Now if it was a KH collection for PS4 containing all of 1.5, 2.5, and the prologue that would sell massively...

I'll definitely be getting Tales and Yakuza on release date, maybe RE7 if GAF likes it, but I absolutely hated RE6.... Tales is having a simultaneous PC launch again, right?

IrishNinja · Oct 8, 2016

Son Of Sparda said:
Unfortunately I don't think the current Yakuza fanbase is big enough to warrant enough sales needed to justifie the cost of localizing the games. That's one of the biggest problem of the series in the west. That and the fact that most people don't Yakuza actually is.

I'm sure there are lots of people out there how think this is some Japanese GTA/Mafia clone-

What?

"GTA in Japan" is factually the most inaccurate perception of Yakuza series among public and I blame Sega for that.

You know what Yakuza is? It's a Japanese crime drama action stylish 3D brawler with many JRPG elements, set in a small yet dense sandbox environment.

YAKUZA IS NOT GTA!

This is Yakuza:

Come on guys, this is something different. Give it a try.

SephLuis said:
If I had the photoshop skills I would make one of those What I Played/ What I expected / What I got for the Yakuza series.

Put what I expected GTA + Japan and What I got put everything that's awesome in the series. There's a lot of people that still make the GTA Japan mistake.

yakuza-GAF is best GAF
we're working on a thread to address just this sort of things!

Robert at Zeboyd Games · Oct 8, 2016

Son Of Sparda said:
"GTA in Japan" is factually the most inaccurate perception of Yakuza series among public and I blame Sega for that.

Sorry, my point was that it's an M-rated game about criminals and that it's not going after the same demographic as a Moebius meets anime T-rated superhero game. I understand that Yakuza plays noticeably differently than GTA.

Mihael Mello Keehl · Oct 8, 2016

Son Of Sparda said:
Unfortunately I don't think the current Yakuza fanbase is big enough to warrant enough sales needed to justifie the cost of localizing the games. That's one of the biggest problem of the series in the west. That and the fact that most people don't Yakuza actually is.

I'm sure there are lots of people out there how think this is some Japanese GTA/Mafia clone-

What?

"GTA in Japan" is factually the most inaccurate perception of Yakuza series among public and I blame Sega for that.

You know what Yakuza is? It's a Japanese crime drama action stylish 3D brawler with many JRPG elements, set in a small yet dense sandbox environment.

YAKUZA IS NOT GTA!

This is Yakuza:

Come on guys, this is something different. Give it a try.

Damn I need to play one of those lol

Skeeter49 · Oct 8, 2016

Resi 7 doesn't really have to worry about any of that, out of all 5 of those games, it's the biggest one.

Tales, when else do you release it? February is Persona, and Horizon, which isn't a JRPG, but it's an RPG. March is your best bet, but I'm sure there's reasons not to do that.

Yakuza set their release date first, correct? Or was it Resi 7? Either way, can't blame them too much, and when it was just Resi 7 to compete with, I wouldn't say those 2 audiences are the same.

GR2, if you can't release it before December, when else? February's a mess, with Persona 5, Nioh, and Horizon, technically 3 "exclusives". Maybe Nioh or Horizon gets pushed to March, or MLB The Show comes out in March, which isn't going to affect GR2, but I doubt Sony wants two exclusives out in the same month. A more serious answer for March? Keep in mind Sony probably knows Mass Effects date, and a few others, and I'd guess March is more packed then what we know of, so in a few months we could learn that March isn't a good time either, then we're stuck at April, and at that point Sony questioned why they put so much effort into finding a spot for a game they sadly don't care about. Also I think the TLG fiasco has affected the perception of Sony Japan in general, so when people see TLG being delayed again, and GR2 being delayed for more than 2 or 3 months, people just start assuming that studio's incompetent, and I doubt Sony wants that going around, especially with GT being delayed without a date, GR2 needed to land quickly on it's feet.

I stopped questioning Kingdom Hearts when I realized it was Square, who is bad at pricing remasters in the first place, which is a bigger issue than releasing it in a packed month. To give them some credibility, they do have Final Fantasy 12, and it doesn't look good to release 2 remasters too close to each other, so I'm sure they want them spread apart.

zakujanai · Oct 8, 2016

Whilst I worry for the success is these games it's a great time to be an RPG fan.

Dragon Quest Builders - 14/10
World of Final Fantasy - 28/10
Trails of Cold Steel 2 - 11/11
Pokemon Sun & Moon - 11/11
Final Fantasy XV - 29/11

Brief respite in December before January 24th-gate followed by Persona 5 in February and Fractured But Whole and Trails in the Sky The 3rd in spring 2017.

I just hope their of enough masochistic fans like myself willing to buy everything day one with no hope of getting to half of it until next summer

Kieli · Oct 8, 2016

It was like that many year gap between the last Rock Band and Guitar Hero. And then randomly they decide to release together at the same time and cannibalize each other's sales (not that there were much to begin with).

wapplew · Oct 8, 2016

Mass_Pincup said:
Let's remember everyone who said that delaying GR2 was a good idea in the other thread.

It's going to get murdered.

-Kingdom Hearts has a broader appeal thanks to Disney characters and the fact that it's an established brand
-RE7 is also more established and mainstream
-Yakuza 0 is going to target basically the same audience while also being "more mature friendly"
-Berseria is the same niche but with brand power

I would say that it's actually worse then the former release date, but we'll see. The only advantage GR2 as against the others is production values, KH might be close though.

Why delay GR in the first place then?

You need to see this in GR2 main market, the east.
The original date, GR2 is up against FF15, TLG and Yakuza 6, all within a week, 3 eastern appealing titles. New date it's face against RE7 and KH2.8, both western oriented title.

Abounder · Oct 8, 2016

They want to gamble on the foot traffic and online presence, but I agree it can be a disaster like the already mentioned Battleborn vs Overwatch. Probably better to delay than to over-saturate the market like what Paladins is showcasing. In the movie world Warner Bros. delayed their Jungle Book Origins movie because of Disney's, that should eventually trickle down to other entertainment practices

Son Of Sparda · Oct 8, 2016

SephLuis said:
If I had the photoshop skills I would make one of those What I Played/ What I expected / What I got for the Yakuza series.

Put what I expected GTA + Japan and What I got put everything that's awesome in the series. There's a lot of people that still make the GTA Japan mistake.

Yeah, as Irish said we at community thread are actually working on a new Yakuza thread to introduce the series to newcomers.

If everything goes as planned we should have something along those lines in it.

Robert at Zeboyd Games said:
Sorry, my point was that it's an M-rated game about criminals and that it's not going after the same demographic as a Moebius meets anime T-rated superhero game. I understand that Yakuza plays noticeably differently than GTA.

Nah, it's okay. As I said, I blame Sega for not advertising the series properly. Yakuza games really are nothing alike GTA or Mafia and stuff like that and Sega has to make that clear.

Regarding your initial point, I kinda disagree. Sure they are targeted at different demographics but niche Japanese stuff usually have overlaps in their fanbases. For instance I'm a fan of both Yakuza and Tales of series and would have liked to try Gravity Rush 2 as well if it had a better release date. But now, I have to consider the games in February as well so I can't buy whatever I want and need to prioritize my purchases.

Mihael Mello Keehl said:
Damn I need to play one of those lol

You really should man, they are very fun. You can start with the upcoming Yakuza 0!

ScatheZombie · Oct 8, 2016

Iva Demilcol said:
Pretty interesting and informative post but now I just have one question... How do you explain that preorders for Persona 5 increased when SE announced the delay of FFXV? Isn't that an indication that the release of some games cannibalizes the sales of others?

There's always exceptions to every rule. Smaller titles, smaller markets, and the hardcore community are dramatically more affected by this - specific genres, like JRPGs are also more heavily affected. Single-player titles that require extensive time investments are more susceptible to customer-sharing than multiplayer shooters. There's more overlap in the JRPG market than COD vs BF, for example - but probably still not enough to warrant intentionally changing your release date by weeks/months for the sole purpose of avoiding a competitor.

Persona and FF aren't exactly small titles, but Japan is a relatively small market and preorders are predominantly your hardcore fans. They aren't necessarily the bulk of your sales.

Cannibalization of sales exists, but not on a scale that's really impacting overall launch window sales. It seems like the assumption is that launching directly against a competitor could cannibalize a huge percentage (>30%) of your potential sales and hurt your bottom line. The reality is that it's been (in my experience) ~5-10% at most. In general, you more than make up for that by launching in a holiday window.

A 450% bump in preorders (only Amazon, only Japan) the day after the delay announcement isn't necessarily indicative that there is a substantial overlap of customers or that those customers would not have purchased Persona 5 within the launch window had there not been a delay.

Mass_Pincup · Oct 8, 2016

wapplew said:
You need to see this in GR2 main market, the east.
The original date, GR2 is up against FF15, TLG and Yakuza 6, all within a week, 3 eastern appealing titles. New date it's face against RE7 and KH2.8, both western oriented title.

If that was the reasoning they didn't need to delay it worldwide.

excaliburps · Oct 8, 2016

family_guy said:
Who cares if your competitor is releasing a game around the same time you are unless you don't have faith in your product?

Yes, this is the same thinking with movies as well, right?

Aurongel said:
Whatever sales they lose by cannibalization I absolutely promise you is offset by what they make by getting their game out a month before Black Friday.

If they didn't have market data to back this up then they wouldn't do it.

Some of those examples listed are real head scratchers though.

This is what some people forget. It's not like publishers pull release dates out of their asses (though it seems sometimes they do), but based on market data, etc. Granted it's not always 100 percent correct, but they do these things based on data and studies.

ArkhamFantasy said:
EA commented on this at a stockholder meeting. The data they have is telling them that the Titanfall audience and the BF1 audience are different and that both games can do great this holiday.

Yep, this is what EA thinks since it sees Titanfall 2 lining up more with the CoD crowd, with Battlefield having its own audience. If you've played BF1 or TF2, you'll know that the two games play completely different.

ScatheZombie said:
There's a number of factors that go into when a game is released.

For starters, in NA/EU territories, November and December alone account for over half of all game sales in the year. 2 months is +50% of all units sold - generally for both games and hardware. So it shouldn't be any surprise that so many studios target holiday release. In some cases, releasing in the holiday against a competitor will actually net more sales than releasing in June against nothing, simply because June accounts for so few yearly sales by comparison. In Japan, however, that +50% month is... January - which explains a stacked month of JRPGs. And launch window sales (generally first 6 weeks) are more important than overall yearly sales to most studios - since that's how future budgets and bonus structures are built. Sales in November from a game released in June is basically all publisher profit with the development studio getting almost nothing.

After that, game publishers don't have the patience that film studios have. In general, a game is shipped immediately upon completion - or before it's even done. There isn't a major studio I can think of that will sit on a finished product for more than a couple of weeks - whereas I've seen film studios sit on completed products for months to have better release windows. So, a lot of times, the game ships when it's done and its release date is less 'planned' than it might appear.

And that's without considering that I have yet to work on a project that actually hit its original release date. One missed it by 6 months. Another missed it by 2 years. The initial release window might have been empty from competition, but a 6 month delay could put you up against a major title.

Then there's also the fact that studios are generally setting their release dates and production schedules without knowledge of exactly when their competitors will launch. Release date announcements don't happen the second a launch window is determined in-house. Internal dates are set months, sometimes years before an announcement is made. So when your competitor announces their release date is the same as yours, the internal dialogue is more "well, shit" than "Oh, well, we better not launch then" - primarily because the internal milestone date (one that affects bonus compensation among other things) has already been set even if you haven't publicly announced it yet. You have to hit that date regardless of what happens with the rest of the market.

On top of all that, there's a lot less overlap between major titles than I suspect most GAFers think. The market majority doesn't buy that many titles a year. Your average gaming consumer gets one or two titles per year, per genre. It doesn't matter if you release against COD or not to them - they are buying only one game or the other (or both) for the whole year, regardless. Major competition in a down month like June might have an small impact, but in the holidays it's really a non-factor. The issue is less about releasing the same day as the competition from sales perspective and more about competing with their marketing blitz in the same month. You don't lose sales because another game released the same day so much as you lose sales because a competitor with a larger marketing budget outspent your product into relative oblivion.

It's a lot more complicated than simply "Don't release the same week as CoD, idiot!"

No, you can't. Because you're wrong.

Nice post. Yes, valid points. From what devs have told me, they think the same thing (BF1 isn't really the same target audience as TF2, etc.).

I honestly think the player base for shooter games are big enough now that those three games will sell well. And add in the fact that the demographic for them is young 20's to early 30's, which should mean they have a lot of disposable income (in theory). Now the question is, will these people have enough time to actually play all three? I honestly can't say. I know I will, though.

Honestly surprised at the intelligent responses here and not just, "hurr durr EA/X publisher is Stooppid!" comments.

Version 3.0 · Oct 8, 2016

Kill3r7 said:
I agree with the gist of your argument and think the industry needs to release more big titles throughout the year but what was the last game to release in the spring to sell gangbusters (Top5 games sold for the year). I guess this year we had Overwatch and maybe The Division but that is the exception to the rule.

How is a title supposed to sell gangbusters if no one releases key titles outside of Q4?

But it does happen from time to time. I don't watch sales like I used to, but occasionally delayed games release in Q1 to great success. Wind Waker was one of those. So was RE4. Dark Souls 2 was a spring release and that didn't hurt it. Watch Dogs too. Sony does a good job of releasing year round and does well with it.

Now flip that around: what games released outside of Q4 bombed but would've been hits if they'd just waited and released the same day as CoD?

Newtype-001 · Oct 8, 2016

I though GR2s new date would be better for it but i didnt know how stacked January just became as well.
:'(

Version 3.0 · Oct 8, 2016

ScatheZombie said:
For starters, in NA/EU territories, November and December alone account for over half of all game sales in the year. 2 months is +50% of all units sold - generally for both games and hardware. So it shouldn't be any surprise that so many studios target holiday release.

That's a self-fulfilling prophecy. It's like saying "people eat the most food in December, so people gain the most weight in December". Not exactly a profound insight. If all the games are released in Q4, and all the marketing occurs in Q4, then no kidding, the sales will occur in Q4. Move those elsewhere, and the sales will follow. Obviously you have Christmas, but believe it or not, people don't just buy products released in Q4 at Christmas.

ScatheZombie said:
In general, a game is shipped immediately upon completion - or before it's even done.

ScatheZombie said:
And that's without considering that I have yet to work on a project that actually hit its original release date.

You're contradicting yourself. Are games deliberately released in Q4, or do they ship when completed, which is, according to you, never when they were planned to be done? You're not going to try and convince us that the stacked Q4 every year just happens to be when over half the games that year coincidentally were all completed at once, are you?

ScatheZombie said:
You don't lose sales because another game released the same day so much as you lose sales because a competitor with a larger marketing budget outspent your product into relative oblivion.

What's the difference? There's only so much room for consumer spend, and there's only so much room for consumer attention to marketing. If you release the same day/week/month as one or several games with bigger audiences and bigger marketing budgets, does it matter whether consumers chose their game because of limited budget or because they didn't notice your game? Either way, you'd have been better off staying clear of that timeframe.

JustSomeone · Oct 8, 2016

People don't buy games only around their release date, you know...

CertifiedFP · Oct 8, 2016

Son Of Sparda said:
Unfortunately I don't think the current Yakuza fanbase is big enough to warrant the sales needed to justifie the cost of localizing the games. That's one of the biggest problem of the series in the west. That and the fact that most people don't know what Yakuza actually is.

I'm sure there are lots of people out there who think this is some Japanese GTA/Mafia clone-

What?

"GTA in Japan" is factually the most inaccurate perception of Yakuza series among public and I blame Sega for that.

You know what Yakuza is? It's a Japanese crime drama action stylish 3D brawler with many JRPG elements, set in a small yet dense sandbox environment.

YAKUZA IS NOT GTA!

This is Yakuza:

Come on guys, this is something different. Give it a try.

Wait, it isn't?

I'm out.

H.Protagonist · Oct 8, 2016

It's not a lack of good judgment. It's...life.

1) Golden Weeks
- Tons of games all wanting to be in time for holiday season/their EoY = unavoidable traffic jam

2) Release Date Shuffling
- While most pubs have a general idea about the release dates of other games, release dates routinely get juggled and changed bc of X, Y, Z and sometimes you end up cheek to jowl with something that you'd originally tried to plan to be about 2 weeks from through no fault of your own.

3) No Conflict
- Most pubs aren't overly worried that COD is going to eat into their tactical RPG sales.

4) Internal Schedule Pressure
- Once finished it doesn't usually pay to sit on a product for ages trying to wait for a window that may or may not happen. A lot of things have to be set in order to even announce a release date (production and delivery to the shippers, store pick-ups for stocking, promotional timing, etc.) and sometimes you just need to pull the trigger or it's a major headache of rescheduling with multiple vendors.

5) Oops
- Sometimes all your own carefully laid plans go to hell. You've got everything all lined up, dates are set, vendors are set, pre-orders are flowing, and...boom. You fail your 2nd (buffer) submission and there's no bloody way to get it fixed, resubmitted, and approved in time for you to start printing disc/shipping materials for the date you had set.

Etc., etc.

ScatheZombie · Oct 8, 2016

Leondexter said:
How is a title supposed to sell gangbusters if no one releases key titles outside of Q4?

But it does happen from time to time. I don't watch sales like I used to, but occasionally delayed games release in Q1 to great success. Wind Waker was one of those. So was RE4. Dark Souls 2 was a spring release and that didn't hurt it. Watch Dogs too. Sony does a good job of releasing year round and does well with it.

Now flip that around: what games released outside of Q4 bombed but would've been hits if they'd just waited and released the same day as CoD?

It's basically just Microsoft (and recently Activision) that rarely releases titles outside Q4.

Sony has done Uncharted 4 (May), Ratchet and Clank (April), Until Dawn (August), Bloodborne (March), The Order 1886 (February), and Infamous Second Son (March). Plus No Man's Sky (August) if you count that - it was certainly marketed like a major title anyway.

Whereas Microsoft has released Forza 5, Sunset Overdrive, Killer Instinct, Halo: MCC, Halo 5, Dead Rising 3, Ryse and Gears 4 in Q4. With Forza Horizon 3 missing Q4 by just 3 days, and Forza 6 by 15 days. They basically just have Titanfall and Quantum Break for major titles outside of the holiday window since 2014 (to be fair, I probably missed a couple).

Even 3rd parties spread out their offerings more (except Activision, but that's mostly because they've become a Call of Duty/Skylanders factory and those always release Q4).
EA releases Madden (August), Mirror's Edge (June), PvZ Garden Warfare 2 (February), and BF: Hardline (March).
Ubisoft has Far Cry: Primal (February), The Division (March), South Park (March) and Watch Dogs (May).
Warner Bros LEGO games come out all over the place, Mad Max was Sept 1st, Arkham Knight (June), Witcher 3 (May), Mortal Kombat X (April) and Dying Light (January).

Leondexter said:
That's a self-fulfilling prophecy. It's like saying "people eat the most food in December, so people gain the most weight in December". Not exactly a profound insight. If all the games are released in Q4, and all the marketing occurs in Q4, then no kidding, the sales will occur in Q4. Move those elsewhere, and the sales will follow. Obviously you have Christmas, but believe it or not, people don't just buy products released in Q4 at Christmas.

That's not how that works. Sales didn't just appear during Q4 magically. Games didn't start targeting holiday season because they randomly chose to. People buy more shit in Q4, period. Not just games, but everything. Q4 is the biggest quarter for literally every retailer in the country across every different product type. There are companies that operate at a loss for 9 months of the year and manage to turn a profit just because of the holiday rush. And that has nothing to do with games whatsoever. It's just economics.

Leondexter said:
You're contradicting yourself. Are games deliberately released in Q4, or do they ship when completed, which is, according to you, never when they were planned to be done? You're not going to try and convince us that the stacked Q4 every year just happens to be when over half the games that year coincidentally were all completed at once, are you?

It's not a contradiction. It's a difference between target and actual. Even if you don't target Q4, you might end up in it anyway. Even if you target Q4, you might end up in Q1 the following year too. Which is why you are seeing more frequent Jan/Feb/March releases than usual too. But that doesn't mean that happens to every title. Some target non-Q4 releases and hit them, others target Q4 and hit it. The point was that some games end up in Q4 out of sheer unfortunate luck rather than planning to drop in the same week as COD.

Leondexter said:
What's the difference? There's only so much room for consumer spend, and there's only so much room for consumer attention to marketing. If you release the same day/week/month as one or several games with bigger audiences and bigger marketing budgets, does it matter whether consumers chose their game because of limited budget or because they didn't notice your game? Either way, you'd have been better off staying clear of that timeframe.

The difference is that release date versus marketing blitz doesn't necessarily line up. Some games run marketing for several months. Some run for several weeks. A few only do a marketing push immediately after launch. This can shift when your marketing (and thus sales) are most effective to several weeks before or after your actual date. This can mean that two games released on the same day can have staggered marketing pushes and effectively separate their perceived launches by weeks. It also means that your competitor can run a huge marketing push during your launch to try to squeeze your sales even if they aren't releasing for several weeks - Blizzard has done this repeatedly to competing MMOs, for example. For AAA though, this is largely irrelevant because every game now has marketing budgets in the $100m range and can garner enough promotion even with competition.

Another thing you might not be considering is that most consumers have the budget to purchase multiple games in Q4 - moreso than any other quarter. Consumers expect to buy more stuff at the end of the year and budget accordingly. It's actually a much bigger issue if, say, COD, BF, Titanfall, and Gears 4 all released in May for example. No one is prepared to purchase 4 titles in May. But they might be considering, even expecting it during Black Friday or Christmas.

I could add another reason this happens - the corporate world of AAA gaming needs to maximize their earnings at the very end of the year for shareholders. This largely depends on how they structure their fiscal year, but a lot of publishers want to have strong Q4 finishes to their earnings reports. A solid Q4 can basically wipe the slate clean if the company has struggled in Q1-Q3. A weak Q4 is fresh in everyone's mind when the stockholders meetings and board elections come around - and no CEO or CFO wants to see that.

Triggerhappytel · Oct 8, 2016

ArkhamFantasy said:
EA commented on this at a stockholder meeting. The data they have is telling them that the Titanfall audience and the BF1 audience are different and that both games can do great this holiday.

I also think this is a strategy to destabilise COD as much as they can by sucking as much air out of the room as possible. However, in the case of Titanfall 2 I think the game is going to suffer for it. It's a franchise they're still trying to establish and I think positioning it so closely to the two biggest FPSs in the market is foolish.

SpinningBirdKick · Oct 8, 2016

Release dates don't matter if you skip buying at launch.

Wait until the hype dies down and prices drop. Then pickup several games for the same price that you would have spent on a single game at launch.

Great games stand the test of time. Don't buy into hype by buying early or preordering. Problem solved.

Version 3.0 · Oct 8, 2016

JustSomeone said:
People don't buy games only around their release date, you know...

They largely do; the video game market is tremendously front-loaded. But the industry has cultivated that, encouraged it to make it more so. I would argue that doing so has been counter-productive in the long run.

somecrazymember · Oct 8, 2016

Christmas presents / holidays / new year bonus / people stay inside and buy shit

Not that hard to understand

Version 3.0 · Oct 8, 2016

ScatheZombie said:
That's not how that works. Sales didn't just appear during Q4 magically. Games didn't start targeting holiday season because they randomly chose to. People buy more shit in Q4, period. Not just games, but everything. Q4 is the biggest quarter for literally every retailer in the country across every different product type. There are companies that operate at a loss for 9 months of the year and manage to turn a profit just because of the holiday rush. And that has nothing to do with games whatsoever. It's just economics.

Obviously. I addressed that, but let me be more clear: half of all retail products don't release in Q4. Other products release at other times, and just sell more units around Christmas. The video game industry, by and large, can't seem to grasp this possibility.

ScatheZombie said:
It's not a contradiction. It's a difference between target and actual. Even if you don't target Q4, you might end up in it anyway. Even if you target Q4, you might end up in Q1 the following year too. Which is why you are seeing more frequent Jan/Feb/March releases than usual too. But that doesn't mean that happens to every title. Some target non-Q4 releases and hit them, others target Q4 and hit it. The point was that some games end up in Q4 out of sheer unfortunate luck rather than planning to drop in the same week as COD.

And my position is clear, obvious and simple to do: don't release your game if it's obviously going to get overlooked. Publishers are in control of release dates, no matter what factors are involved. As I said, movie studios do a pretty good job of adjusting around each others' release dates. Game studios have been wanna-be movie studios for a long time, but they refuse to learn from their successes.

ScatheZombie said:
Another thing you might not be considering is that most consumers have the budget to purchase multiple games in Q4 - moreso than any other quarter. Consumers expect to buy more stuff at the end of the year and budget accordingly. It's actually a much bigger issue if, say, COD, BF, Titanfall, and Gears 4 all released in May for example. No one is prepared to purchase 4 titles in May. But they might be considering, even expecting it during Black Friday or Christmas.

Of course I've considered that. I am aware of Christmas. I even mentioned it. Everyone knows these things. And no one is saying Q4 should have the same number of games as the other quarters. But it seems obvious to me that it's been oversaturated for many years. Video game companies make the same mistake with release dates as they do with genres: they all focus on the same genre, guaranteeing that someone's game is going to fail. And they all focus on Q4, guaranteeing the same. They all gamble on the biggest potential payout, and someone is going to lose. Meanwhile, there are safer bets going unplayed. I do think it's been better this generation, though - in both regards. Might just be due to the exodus towards mobile, though, and not to smarter planning.

ScatheZombie said:
I could add another reason this happens - the corporate world of AAA gaming needs to maximize their earnings at the very end of the year for shareholders. This largely depends on how they structure their fiscal year, but a lot of publishers want to have strong Q4 finishes to their earnings reports. A solid Q4 can basically wipe the slate clean if the company has struggled in Q1-Q3. A weak Q4 is fresh in everyone's mind when the stockholders meetings and board elections come around - and no CEO or CFO wants to see that.

Yes, but this is also short-sighted. But this issue is hardly unique, even partly, to video games. At least in this respect, they're not creating problems that other industries don't have.

Anyway, fun discussion, but damn, it's late. I've been glued to Trump's scandal all night. Gotta go to bed.

patapuf · Oct 8, 2016

How is Fall oversaturated ? The sales of the big shooters keep rising.

Releasing all products during fall is dumb, but the industry doesn't do this. Big publishers release their biggest games during fall. Which makes sense.

Vex_ · Oct 8, 2016

You mention titanfall, battlefield, and gow? Those games are going after entirely different audiences. In fact - even between the two EA titles - there is a major divide in audiences.

You are thinking every gamer wants all of those shooters and will actively buy them all. I dont see much overlap between gow players (tps, cover based co op focused shooter) and battlefield for example lol. For obvious reasons.

----------

You mention tales of bersia got bumped to next year. Then you mention gravity rush getting bumped to next year.

What most gamers dont understand is that these decisions were likely made quite sometime ago. These things dont happen overnight, but once they come up with a new date internally, then they get PR all on it and they send the message to us. They cant know what the "competition" is doing. They cant keep changing the dates over and over either.

Oh - and I put quotes around competition because there really isnt any competition between gravity freaking rush2 and bersia lmfao!

beastmaster · Oct 8, 2016

I really think this is a reason square enix pushed back final fantasy. It gives room for world of final fantasy a chance to shine. They were initially pushed so close together on release dates. A lot of people would have just skipped right over a game like w.o.f.f. playing ff. Now people are a little disappointed that they have to wait and are still itching for something jrpg.

Code:

xealo · Oct 8, 2016

It have to do with christmas.

If the game is going to be in a state ready for release before December, publishers generally don't want to push it up to the next year, and miss the holidays sales from people not following gaming news.

SwolBro · Oct 8, 2016

it just seems like the gaming industry is following the hollywood summer blockbuster release schedules. it's about releasing in the summer (movies)/Winter (gaming) regardless if you're releasing a week before or after another major title.

Megawarrior · Oct 8, 2016

mullet2000 said:
Gravity Rush 2 - Jan 20th
Kingdom Hearts 2.8 HD - Jan 24th
Resident Evil 7 - Jan 24th
Yakuza 0 - Jan 24th
Tales of Berseria - Jan 24th

RE7 doesn't have to worry about the others when it's probably going to outsell all of those combined.

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