| Written by Vicious |
| Monday, 07 December 2009 03:53 |
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Release Date, get!
Excelsior Friends and welcome to the final edition of the Dungeon for 2009.
One of the most sought after pieces of information for a highly anticipated game in development is its Release Date and DC Universe Online is no exception. I’ll be discussing my thoughts on DCUO’s possible release window, but first let’s take a look at why release dates are handled in the fashion that they are in the Video Game Industry, and MMOs in particular.
In most forms of media entertainment, very popular franchises or works from a specific creator/creative team tend to gain a large following. One way to generate interest and invoke anticipation is by marketing certain dates to consumers to drive traffic and sales at the time of release. The Music Industry, Movies, Sports and even Television (to a lesser degree) maintain consumer loyalty and interest in this manner, to generally positive results. I can still remember the date that certain movies debuted in the theater and remember franchises such as Star Wars and Lord of the Rings drawing millions across the country on their respective release dates, encouraging many Über-fans to get in line days, weeks or even months before!
Unlike those mediums, Video Games usually take much longer to develop and deliver to the marketplace, making the ability to set and advance release date in many case impossible if not improbable, as a Publisher doesn’t want to commit to a date that can’t be met. Besides disappointing ones’ consumers, millions of dollars in marketing can be at stake, as well as skewing financial numbers for potential Shareholders and creating dissidence with Retailers by not meeting their commitment. With the exception of a few special cases, many times a release date isn’t officially announced before a year within its release. Microsoft made headlines when Peter Moore announced the release date for Halo 2, a year and a half before its release with a Tattoo to prove it at E3 2003. Halo 2 went on to become one of the largest media releases of all time, debuting at $125 Million in it’s first day!
In general though, gamers don’t tend to receive this type of unparalleled, early and accurate advance notice. More often than not, games are announced for preliminary dates that aren’t met. Some publishers have forgone announcing release dates until they are absolutely certain the game will be complete at that time. Blizzard is notorious for this practice, as is Nintendo.
Taking all of this into account, how do all of these factors affect DC Universe Online?
We know that during his keynote address at GDC 2009, Sony Online Entertainment President John Smedley announced that DC Universe Online would be coming out in 2010.
Obviously that’s a broad canvas to choose from.
So what else do we know?
Last we heard, the game was still Pre-Alpha, and that was during Austin GDC back in mid-September. Nothing in terms of Alpha Status has been revealed, nor do we have any clues to the actual time frame for Beta Testing. Now, traditionally SOE hasn’t held an open beta test phase, but the last SOE game, Freerealms broke that trend. All that we know for certain is that the dev team is hard at work and the game is coming out in 2010 barring any delays. Assuming that we can have up to several months notice prior the actual release date, we’ll also likely know about the Friends & Family as well as Closed Beta Phases, because let’s face it, people talk. This leads me to believe that we can safely assume that the game will come out in the latter half of 2010; but let’s take this a step further…When working as a Store Manager for the now defunct EB Games, we were privy to many sales numbers for the Video Game Industry, and one of the most amazing and somewhat startling facts was that the Game Industry does nearly 75% of their business in the 4th
Quarter (or Q4) the last 3 months of the year, during the Holidays.
The rumor is that Bioware is positioning their first venture into the MMO landscape, Star Wars: The Old Republic, in Q4 of 2010. Blizzard is also been on the verge of flat out announcing that the 3rd expansion to
the 800 lb. gorilla that is World of Warcraft, The Cataclysm for the same general time period. On one hand it could be dangerous going up against either of these titles. On the other, SOE could put a fairly significant dent in either Game’s potential sales by releasing within the same Q4 2010 window. Although a large part of the DCUO user base will potentially be comic book fans, a substantial portion stands to be your average gamer or MMO player.
With all of these considerations, can we really speculate or ascertain the exact release date for DCUO?
The truth is, No.
Regardless, based upon previous game releases, potential competition, developmental readiness and maximum sales potential, I’m going to make my own personal prediction, which I might add is complete and total speculation; More of an educated guess:
I think that we’ll see DCUO release in Q4 2010, and more specifically, in November.
We’ll all find out together in the not too distant future.
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