So I picked up my mindless action fix on Friday in the form of Gears of War 2. A night of playing indicated that it should tide of cravings for at least the next few months, even if there’s more story in the first 10 minutes that than in the entire first game.
I only bring this up because the back of the case sported this sticker:
Ignoring the missing full stop after 2008, release dates have been an interesting issue in games over the last few weeks. Before I go any further let me just clarify that this is definitely where this becomes a blog, not legitimate journalism. The only sources I have on any of this are direct conversations with retailers that were on a casual chat basis and in no way recorded. K? K.
So October 23 was to be the start of the pre-Christmas releases in gaming, marking the first major console releases since Grand Theft Auto 4 (April 29) and Metal Gear Solid 4 (June 17), neither of which I had much interest in anyway. Three major releases were to dawn that day: Fable 2, Dead Space, and Far Cry 2. However, on Friday 17, Kmart Western Australia broke street date on Fable 2, arguably Xbox’s biggest release since Halo 3. On the Monday, Microsoft contacted Kmart and fined them $1000 per copy sold before release date and informed them that their next big release (Gears of War 2) would be given to them a full month after other retailers. The next day other retailers were allowed to break street date and begin selling the game. It could well be argued that this is overly malicious business. Holding the next release would have been sufficient penalty – I have heard of Valve doing something similar regarding the release of Half Life 2 – but the added $1000 fine seems like a fairly low blow, considering how little mark up there is on games to begin with. However as much as an industry member may have stepped in, to me it seems unlikely that someone would lock legal horns with Microsoft.
Then an interesting thing happened, Far Cry 2 broke street date and was released a day early, leaving only Dead Space chilling in the green room. Also, if you remember my last post that was predominantly a censorship fight the power rant, I briefly mentioned that Fallout 3 was my most anticipated game release for the year. It also broke street date. Not that I could buy it being neck deep in uni work, but apparently in this instance vendors simply told retailers to put it on the shelves early.
In some cases, video game release dates seem like pointless withholding of a product. They’re not exactly like movies or albums that are all released on Thursdays and Saturdays respectively. In the case of games based in an online community, I could understand needing to manage which regions receive a product first. Blizzard would probably want some idea of which servers would be busiest when during addon releases of World of Warcraft, plus having a world wide release for such games would mean that countries like Australia would get the game before it was the same day in the States. This chain of broken street dates has piqued my interest though. Maybe Australian retailers have just gotten the shits with doing midnight sales for games they receive up to three months after the rest of the world, but I can’t help but think this is a big fuck you to Microsoft.
Breaking the Silence
1 day ago
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