Misses of the Holiday Season

[modeps]

Gamasutra (http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?story=21178) has an interesting piece today. They culled predictions from three industry analysts who weigh in on which titles they feel will not sell well this holiday because of the current landscape. Titles included are all over the place, but head over (http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?story=21178) to take a peek at their predictions.

As part of a new Gamasutra feature on holiday season game sales, analysts from Wedbush Morgan, Screen Digest and EEDAR have been picking potential sales disappointments for this holiday, from Tomb Raider Underworld to Animal Crossing: City Folk.

The game industry analysts, which include Michael Pachter of Wedbush Morgan, Ed Barton of Screen Digest and Jesse Divnich of EEDAR, were asked: "Which titles coming out for the holiday season do you predict will be hits? And which ones will struggle for gamers' money in the weak economy?"

What do you think will tank, and what do you think will sell like hot potatoes?

[Flatpicker]

All three analysts are full of it.
They all are predicting LBP to be a big exclusive and that just is not playing out.

I'm not even expecting Animal Crossing to be too big. It just does not seem like the type of game that people who bought the Wii for Wii Sports, Fit and etcetra to go for.

Also, I'm expecting the Wii Clone Wars game to underperform. I haven't heard much about it and it's already been released.

For the 360, I'm expecting GOW2 to be underperforming compared to expectations. I think it's going to be a victim of too much out at the same time.

I expect Fallout 3 to overperform. Word of mouth has been good. Possibly more sales for the Force Unleashed.

MK vs DC will fall off the radar. There is no hype for it.

[GunnSgtHartman]

Personally I've bought every game I was interested in the past few weeks...

- Far Cry 2 (360)
- Dead Space (360)
- Fallout 3 (360)
- Call of Duty World at War (360)
- Little Big Planet (PS3)
- Saint's Row 2 (PS3)
- Resistance 2 (PS3)

The only quality game I wasn't really interested in was Fable 2. I don't buy games from Peter Molyneux since the glorified tech demo that Black & White was. I played the first Fable and I thought it was a good game but not more.

I don't understand why many publishers want to release so many games in a short period... If people get an average of 3 games during the holiday season, some games will not sell as much as they should... and it's not because they suck !

How many games did you guys buy since late October ?

[Flatpicker]

Too many.
I still have Fable 2 in the shrink wrap.

Fable 2
Mercenaries 2
Fallout 3
Star Wars: TFU
Star Wars: Clone wars (wii)
Saints Row 2
Dead Space
Wipeout HD
Gears of War 2

Plus the Batman Animated DVD set.