This year, for example, mega-popular Chinese role-playing game Genshin Impact released its 2.0 update over the summer, adding an entire new Japan-inspired region. Instead, they are sustained by regular updates, some of which verge on being sequels unto themselves. In recent years, the video game industry has become the domain of live service games that, like League of Legends and Valorant, never really end. That last game, in particular, points to a broader change in how video games are bought and sold. Pachter added, however, that non-holiday major releases are far from a new thing, pointing to the February and March launches of Ubisoft anchors like 2018′s Far Cry ′s Far Cry New Dawn as examples.
CD Projekt Red, especially, seems to have learned this lesson, given that it just delayed the PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X versions of Cyberpunk and its previous hit The Witcher 3 to 2022. "I think the debacle of Cyberpunk taught people better to keep a game until it's ready rather than to rush it out for holiday," Pachter said. Michael Pachter, a video game industry research analyst for Wedbush Securities, says there's increased incentive for publishers to delay in the name of polish after last year's hotly anticipated Cyberpunk 2077 emerged from the oven so half-baked Sony pulled it from the PlayStation store and game creator CD Projekt Red endured a months-long PR fiasco.
Once considered risky, it's now become something at which observers barely bat an eyelash. In recent years, an increasing number of big games have moved to the first part of the new year to either maximize development time or to avoid getting crushed by the clockwork footfalls of annual behemoths like Call of Duty, which traditionally release during the holiday season.
Where once games were perceived as toys for children, making them the perfect Christmas gift, the average age range of gamers is now 35-44 years old according to the Entertainment Software Association (ESA), a body that represents the video game industry. This shift away from the typical October-December release window is not as sudden as it seems. Call of Duty: Vanguard, Shin Megami Tensei V, Battlefield 2042, Final Fantasy XIV: Endwalker and Halo Infinite highlight the holiday release schedule. If you compare that spread to what we're getting in the two holiday months preceding early 2022, it's an almost-even score in terms of sheer major game quantity. That's a lot of high-profile game releases sandwiched together, and that's to say nothing of numerous lesser-known games that will also come out in January and February. Within the final 11 days of that month, Rainbow Six Extraction - a co-op spinoff of Ubisoft's massively popular multiplayer shooter - and long-awaited series shake-up Pokémon Legends: Arceus both drop. Widen the net to the waning weeks of January 2022, and the boatload of game releases becomes even more titanic. That doesn't figure to be the case in February 2022. That has made the months ripe for counterprogramming, with other games able to stand out amid less competition. In fact, much of the games development world takes time off following the usual whirlwind end of the year, when publishers saturate the market with new games, seeking to capitalize on holiday season spending. The post-holiday months of January and February have normally been two of the calendar's quietest months in terms of game releases.
And while Saints Row, a reboot of a beloved open-world series in the vein of Grand Theft Auto, hasn't been delayed (yet), a month it normally would have had to itself suddenly has that game rubbing shoulders with a cadre of gaming's coolest kids. Delayed more times than anyone can count at this point, Dying Light 2, the sequel to 2015′s surprise action-horror hit about smacking zombies with (frequently electrified) garbage, is slated for a Feb. So was The Witch Queen, the latest and possibly biggest expansion to Destiny 2. Horizon, a PlayStation tentpole, was delayed out of the end of 2021 earlier this year. It now joins a teetering buffet tray of other high-profile releases in the same month: Horizon Forbidden West, Saints Row and Destiny 2: The Witch Queen chief among them. In late October, Elden Ring - the unexpected love child of two mediums' fantasy kings in Dark Souls director Hidetaka Miyazaki and Game of Thrones author George R.R. The video game holiday release bonanza is a time-honored tradition, but alterations to working conditions and supply chain issues related to the COVID-19 pandemic seem to be changing that in 2021, at least temporarily.