The next five months of video game entertainment hold ominous warnings for the industry...Believe it or not, despite the seemingly inevitable onslaught of next-generation consoles from Sony and Microsoft in the latter half of 2013, all is not necessarily well for the video games industry this year. My first inklings of worry for the shift in release schedules emerged in the early months of 2012, when pretty much the only big games we saw in the first half of the year were Mass Effect 3 and Max Payne 3. At first, this seems like a decent prospect of two blockbuster sequels for gamers everywhere, yet compare it to the fact that we received Dishonored, Assassin's Creed III, Halo 4, Call Of Duty: Black Ops II, Hitman: Absolution, FarCry 3 and dozens more titles in the Autumn Of Gaming period, and there's a subtle problem emerging for the industry.
But how, I hear you ask? Can it really be that negative an omen that video game publishers are attempting to appease the Christmas crowds? Well, in short, yes. In a longer format, though, we're starting to see increasing evidence of developers attempting too heavily to adhere to the needs of the Call Of Duty audience, shoehorning in dire multiplayer modes such as Tomb Raider's upcoming needless VS. mode and the criticised co-op campaigns on FarCry 3 and Resident Evil 6 last Autumn. Initially, this adherence for sales doesn't seem like much of a problem, but soon enough it could start converting bold single-player experiences from the heights of Skyrim into predictable short segments that are bolstered by unnecessary online components. I've chatted on the problem of online multiplayer before, yet by always releasing games in the Christmas period, developers are just starting to feed into the problem once again.
Worse still, let's look at the impact this production time-scale shift is starting to have on the Summer months. After we've got Aliens: Colonial Marines, Dead Space 3, Tomb Raider, Gears Of War: Judgement, BioShock Infinite and Injustice: Gods Among Us in the next three months, beyond GRID 2 and Fuse that's pretty much your lot until Grand Theft Auto V lands in September. Sensing a problem, here? Admittedly Rockstar's much anticipated open-world behemoth was delayed due to a heightened sense of desire for quality from the developer, but that should have been one minor misstep in a successful holiday period. Instead, whereas 2012's Summer line-up included Max Payne 3, The Amazing Spider-Man, Spec Ops: The Line and LEGO Batman 2: DC Superheroes, now we've got virtually nothing until Splinter Cell: Blacklist arrives in late August.
To be honest, I don't reckon we'll all be prophecising some kind of industrial apocalypse for video gaming come the end of 2013, what with the next-generation of consoles appearing on the horizon and the WiiU set to get a whole load of big new titles throughout the year. Nevertheless, if the industry sticks to its dull second-half release schedule focus, then more developers like THQ and Junction Point are going to begin falling by the wayside as their attempts to release minor games in a hectic Christmas period for maximum sales backfire horribly. That's something that the industry cannot afford as it enters its next incarnation later this year, and so a shortcoming that must be quelled- before it's too late. If publishers don't find a way to entice gamers to buy new offerings in the Spring and Summer months, then it could be Game Over before the new generation of consoles has even started to pick up pace...
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