Ryuu96 said:
This, Lol. So many other actual issues to care about than when a developer decides to announce their videogame. And honestly, in many cases there's little difference if a game is unannounced or announced, let me use an example, Rockstar with GTA 6, everyone knows Rockstar is making GTA 6, I know Rockstar is making GTA 6, it makes absolutely zero difference to me whether they make a trailer now, a year ago or a year from now, the game is still releasing when it's releasing and the trailer makes no change to that. Another example would be the countless of games leaked, anyone who follows Xbox news knew that Fable was in development, makes no difference when they decide to put together a trailer as we already knew it was in development. Most people will think "cool trailer" then move on and forget about it as we're swamped with dozens of games actually releasing. Then when the game in close to release, the marketing cycle will kick up again and the excitement will build, I do not buy the theory that early announcements hurt a games sales that some people say, countless of games announced years in advance, only to go quiet, then to massively kick up the marketing campaign and build excitement again because...that's marketing, Lol. The film/tv industry announce projects years in advance, many times without even a trailer, they'll just say "so and so is working on this" but it feels like only the gaming industry has people who get weirdly angry about early announcements. To me, they are either "whatever" or they build excitement as I can see what I have to look forward to in the future, especially if it's an IP I love. And it's also weird too because people will complain about early announcements but at the same time they'll be like "WHERE IS THIS GAME? WHY ISN'T IT ANNOUNCED YET? WHY AREN'T THEY DOING A SEQUEL?" Lol. The early announcements at least can ease those concerns which will become more relevant as videogames take longer and longer to develop (like 4-6 year average now). Plus it's a hiring tool, which as far as I'm concerned is more important than gamers moaning. I think what would be cool though is if developers showed more behind the scenes or work in progress stuff over the course of development but I don't know if gamers would be ready for that, they'll lose their shit when a concept art revealed by a developer isn't in the final product or lose their shit at clearly labelled "WORK IN PROGRESS/ALPHA" footage not being pretty enough... |
A lot of this post is from the perspective of someone who follows every scrap of gaming news, rumours etc. The vast majority of the millions that watch these trailers do not. Excessively early announcements build false expectations and disappointment in consumers and there's no greater example of this than Xbox's June 2020 event. How many people saw that event expecting that to be the new consoles 1st party line-up for the first 1-2 years of the Xbox Series? They announced 6 1st-party games for Xbox Series at that event and the only one that launched within 3 years was an episodic game. Hellblade 2 was announced even earlier.
If someone bought an Xbox Series based on the games MS showed in June 2020 it would be completely understandable to be pissed that the line-up they promised before it launched still hasn't been delivered after the machine is over 3 years old.
There are much bigger issues in gaming of course, but that doesn't mean we can only discuss the biggest issues and can't give our opinion on this. Early announcements with no indication of when the title will release is anti-consumer to a degree as it can motivate a purchase based on false expectations. MS knew exactly what they were doing before the release of the Xbox Series. They knew they didn't have a good line-up for the first couple of years of the Xbox so they announced titles that were over 4 years away to get people to buy their console anyway. It's possible that this failure to produce the goods they used to sell their machine is one of the reasons that Xbox sales have fallen so drastically this year, people may be tired of waiting.
But I completely agree that early announcements do not hurt a games sales when it finally comes out, I don't think there's anything to indicate this. AS for your final point yes gamers aren't ready for "work in progress" footage. I mean we've seen how people have reacted to stuff like the old GTA VI and Wolverine leaks. People calling them shit based on leaked footage from a build over 4 years before the title is meant to come out. A lot of gamers give zero consideration to it being a work in progress and just say what they see.
Last edited by Zippy6 - on 28 December 2023
