Are you one of those people that believes all the good games should come out in Q4? Nintendo was, once upon a time, but just like all the other disrupting they’re doing to the industry right now, they’ve decided to turn their sights to the calendar too. No, I’m not talking Calendar DS Fun Time Touch or some other wacky new title, I’m talking release dates.
Nintendo of America’s outgoing vice president of marketing says that the company is “starting to look at the annual calendar differently” in terms of release date timing, rather than just stuffing everything in Q4. Speaking to MTV Multiplayer, Perrin Kaplan reacted to a question about Smash Bros. Brawl’s proposed release date – a Sunday, 10th February – by saying, “Why not? … Sunday is actually a really good launch day of the week for products. And I think we’re actually starting to look at the annual calendar differently.
Now that I think about it, Tuesday stinks as a release date for anything. I’m at work and when I leave at 5 I have the gym, dinner, already purchased games and sleep on my mind. High school kids have homework. Adults (meaning older than my twenty-something years) have kids and more work. I don’t want to make the 20 minute trip from my apartment to go buy a game at Target. And this may also sound crazy, but I don’t like chasing down things during the holiday season. A) they’re usually sold out and B) there’s always a line. A game like Smash Bros., riding the coattails of Galaxy, will sell in February, or March, or whenever.
We’ll just have to see if Nintendo can be as successful at disrupting the release cycle as thy have been with software development, interaction and audience, won’t we?
Either that, or Kaplan was talking out of her ass again.