Why No Actions Taken for Blockbuster Titles This Winter?
By Date: 12-31-2011 Views:
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The online game market is usually crowded with blockbusters every winter, but this winter, it seems unusually quiet. Why? As analyzed by experts, due to increasingly intense competition, many game companies have reluctantly given up on the prime release time – winter vacation, but focused their efforts on new projects.
In the past couple years, online games costing large sums of money could pull in players very easily. But now players' reaction to such high-cost games seems to be subdued. In other words, with the rapid growth of the game market, players become choosy gradually. So, big game companies are doing their best to satisfy players' demands with the sole goal of producing perfect online games even at the cost of giving up on the prime release time (winter vacation).
Everything has its pros and cons. Big companies' such decision gives medium and small-sized ones a precious business opportunity. Recently, many new online games will conduct CBT or OBT. However, it is still incomparable with previous years. Last year, TERA fueled the market. But this winter, the game market is deemed to be quiet since there's only BioWare's Star Wars: The Old Republic officially released.
For example, Blade & Soul, ArcheAge from XL Games, and Yulgang 2 from Mgame, which were showcased and well-received by the players at G-Star 2011 last month, have successively delayed their release plans. Players may have to wait a relatively long time till Guild Wars 2 (developed by NCsoft's North American branch ArenaNet) and Yulgang 2 enter the market. Yulgang 2 has just put an end to its first CBT, so it won't meet players till several more tests are conducted. Though recently, Guild Wars 2 has made public its eighth class which is also the final one – Mesmer and a family and friend's type closed beta has kicked off. But when is the public test? That's a problem.
