What have you done for me lately?
So last month the nintendo switch 2 launched and a lot of talk has been brought up about launch titles, launch libraries, and some of the talk has shifted to the idea of the "launch year" now being a thing instead of just a launch day. I found this shift interesting so today I decided to dive into that a bit
We all know at one point that the launch day titles were some of the most vital things to sell a system, back in the day when gaming magazines were the major source of upcoming game news, and E3 still existed (RIP big dawg ;( ). Ironically, this was the time period when game development timelines were much shorter so even if a game didnt come out on launch day the idea of having a decent library in about a year's time wasn't too hard to believe.
However, in this day and age with youtube, social media, and many other platforms and how these companies have embraced them, it's much easier to control your own events; you're not at the whim of a E3 or Summer Games Fest to let people know about big games. In Nintendo's case, their directs are massive events much like E3s in and of themselves. I think what helps is often times the games shown at these events are usually games that will release or be playable in the next 6 months (if not available... Today!). Compare that to E3 or SGF or Sony/Xbox events where a lot of the time we just get CGI trailers and some year that is 2 or more years away. The next time we hear about the game in question, it's getting delayed. It's easy to see why Nintendo's events tend to get a bit more hype around them.
After establishing some channels for information and a format that works for them, it makes sense that the next thing is to know what's the best way to navigate the current landscape of news and attention spans where we have already arrived at the singularity and things are often old and outdated before they've even been widely spread at all. A consequence of this is the idea that no matter how "big" the news is, often times in 48 hours the shock has worn off (I am talking about video games here not things that actually matter keep in mind). So announcing a brand new console will have the same staying power in the mind of the internet as announcing DLC for a well loved game.
All of this is to say it makes sense how Nintendo has chosen to space out their releases, and their news. The "launch day" library is an outdated concept and what's more important is the launch year. If you think this isn't the case, look at the playstation 5 which still has a reputation of having no games for it's slow drip of games in its launch year. Granted, it released in the middle of a pandemic, but the reputation still sticks doesn't it? People start asking if singleplayer games are dead if they go 2 months without a patch, and multiplayer? God help you if you don't have some sort of weekly update system. It also makes sense in giving all the attention and spotlight on what they feel are high quality titles, even if theyre more "niche". Titanfall 2 'failed' not for being a bad game but for releasing between call of duty and battlefield 1. Now imagine if Sony decided to release Ghosts and Horizon on the same day so they can boast about how many games they have.
It's one of those things that sounds good in concept to some people but in practice, nobody really feels that way; look at the little meme of "I want games with bad graphics made by people who work less!" and then look at the reaction to a game like fantasian and many other turn-based games that are regularly released and ignored, primarily because people "want AAA graphics". The fact is that most people are not going to buy both games but will only buy one. And then the other game will be relegated to the deep dark realm of... the backlog contenders
It's a well-documented fact that generally speaking most games sell most of their lifetime sales in the first few weeks of release and then after that it tails off pretty sharply. A big part of that is that, whether we like it or not, the feeling of playing a brand new game alongside the general community, the excitement of release, the feeling of finally getting your hands on a new game (and FOMO) does a lot of heavy lifting selling games. That all changes when all of that is gone and it's in a level playing field with all the games that have been sitting in your eshop/steam/psn/xbox wishlist for the last several years, and at a fraction of the cost in monthly sales! In my hypothetical from earlier, lets say I hopped on Ghosts and decided to get horizon later. I finish Ghosts and decide I want to buy a new game since a sale just started... am I going to be more moved by -90% $5 or -10% $54? Add in maybe there's another game I was also waiting on that is on sale for 50% and it's $20? Now I can get 2 brand new games for around half the cost of that one game. Basically, all of the hype is now replaced by more economical decisions since that's the only thing really separating these games (of course this is assuming you don't have any intense feelings towards any game in particular)
This is just one half of the problem of games competing with one another, but another part of the problem is that creeping problem of attention spans. It's better to always have something 'on the horizon' people can look to instead of not having anything that can be talked about in some concrete way. We already live in a time when an album can release at 6am and by 9am people are talking about when the followup project will be released (Shout out to Tyler). So the benefit of having a steady stream of games announced or in the pipeline is that you get ahead of all that discussion, whether in good faith or not.
And this connects back to the establishment of their own channels for releasing news. It wasn't possible back when the N64 or the gamecube came out to reach millions and millions of people in less than a 48 hour notice on a live stream with all your latest games being shown off. They can have their somewhat-quarterly directs that give news for the next 3-4 months about games coming out in that timespan and keep that hype up. That's not even counting the smaller titles that will release in the shorter timescale. Hell they can just drop a game announcement on their own app like they did with splatoon raiders any time they feel like it. But of course all of this only works because of their short release windows. Sony trying to do updates like this for a new game 2 years off would't demand as much attention because the possibility of games getting canceled or heavily reworked into something unexpected can happen in that stage of development. Nintendo's games are usually already done and they already have shelved titles to hold on to for the perfect release time.
Sony has information control (State of plays and showcases) however their development times are not at the scale required to really pull off the same sort of strategy, as their console is defined by the highest resolution experiences, and those games take time. Granted, something like Astro Bot bucks that trend but it shows why their events tend to rely more on third-party releases... unless we see sony start to embrace those quirky AA titles of the past and actually PUSH and market them.
When you have development time under control, information under control, basically total battlefield control, it's much easier to see why the shift to a focus on gaming over a (fiscal) year appeals to a company like Nintendo and works out best for them. It all comes down to marketing and controlling the conversation in the gaming space, really utilizing FOMO (and a lack of steep discounts) to push these games they feel are the highest quality tentpole titles.
and don't forget to file your tax retrn ;)