I make no bones about how annoying I find the tendency of the games industry to pile all their big releases into the Christmas period and leave an incredibly lean summer. I understand why they do it but for those of us to whom picking up the latest releases is an obsession – part of the growing Xbox Live mentality where you have to play what all your friends are, I suppose – it’s tantamount to torture.
I went through various release lists and worked out all the games and hardware that I intend to buy before the end of the year. Take a look:
October
- Contact (US DS)
- Final Fantasy XII (US PS2)
- Grand Theft Auto: Vice City Stories (US PSP)
- Power Stone Collection (US PSP)
- Pro Evolution Soccer 6 (UK 360)
- Splinter Cell: Double Agent (UK 360)
- Tony Hawk’s Project 8 (UK 360)
November
- Call of Duty 3 (UK 360)
- Elite Beat Agents (US DS)
- F.E.A.R. (UK 360)
- Guitar Hero II (US PS2)
- Football Manager 2007 (Mac)
- Final Fantasy III (US DS)
- Final Fantasy V Advance (US GBA)
- Gears of War (UK 360)
- HD DVD drive (UK 360)
- Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess (US Wii)
- Lumines II (US PSP)
- Rainbow Six Vegas (UK 360)
- Wii (US)
- World of Warcraft: The Burning Crusade (Mac)
- Yoshi’s Island 2 (US DS)
December
- Castlevania: Portrait of Ruin (US DS)
Throw in a few HD DVDs and all the summer movies that are hitting DVD and you have some serious wallet rape going on here. The average person isn’t going to be able to afford to spend a tenth of that on games alone so surely this practice of all saturating the market at the same time can’t be beneficial.
I’ll bet that there’s more than a couple of European gamers out there who are silently thankful that the PS3 was delayed.
Lest we forget that games are that more expensive now. I’ve resorted to renting these days. I can’t really justify spending £50 unless I can be sure I’m going to love the game.
I can live with the £50 since you can usually knock £10 off just by buying online and I used to routinely pay £50-60 for new imports back when importing wasn’t as simple as jumping online and paying £25. It’s just the sheer volume. I want to play all the games even though there’s no way I can give them all the attention they deserve.
I think that qualifies it as some kind of obsession.
If you want to enjoy any of those, you might want to stay away from Burning Crusade ;)
That’s true. I only actually played Warcraft for a couple of months but still managed the best part of a week of play. Not to mention that spending £8.99/month on one game isn’t really conducive to actually coming close to affording all of the other games that I want.
I played WoW for a ridiculous amount of time, and to be honest it’s just not worth the time. About the only positives to actually playing the game where the social aspects, but for actual gameplay and depth I wish I had walked away sooner.
In a way it did save me money though, since for nearly two years it was all I played, only bought around three other games in that time. When I finally had the sense to walk away, sold my account for £500 which wasn’t too bad.
Yeah, it can turn into a bit of a Diablo-esque clickfest. What I liked more than anything is the mythology of the world; how everything had a story behind it. It’s one of the most beautiful virtual places to be that I’ve seen. One of those ones where that old cliche that it’s somewhere you’d actually want to live applies.