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Zippy6 said:
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. |
I feel called out. 
Idk, anecdotal but those are the only people I see complaining about early announcements, Lol.
It depends on the studio as well. You don't have to follow news to know that Rockstar is working on GTA VI for example. There are some studios which the general consumer largely knows that they do. For something like Fable, maybe the general consumer wasn't fully aware but it was an open secret to everyone who followed gaming news even a moderate amount, not as I do, Lol.
I think those who dislike early announcements overestimate how much the casual market cares about it. Most will simply watch a trailer, think "cool" and then move on with their lives, play any number of dozens of games that release every year or continue to play their COD/Fifa for hundreds of hours and completely forget it, Lol. I feel like it's mostly only us who follows news who obsess over where a game is. Nobody is going to care come GTA VI's release when it was announced, as long as it is good and that applies to every single early announcement. Early announcements also don't have to build false expectations if we know nothing about the game itself aside from a vague CG trailer.
I feel like "early announcements" is mixed with a separate complaint for Xbox, I would argue that Xbox would be in a worse position had they not announced many of their projects early, it was exactly because they were in rebuilding mode and had fuck all ready for launch that they had to give consumers some confidence in their brand and the future of Xbox, show a renewed focus, especially after the many doubts that Xbox would stick around. If however, Xbox actually had a strong line-up in 2020 and 2022 then Imho I doubt the vast majority of people would care about when Fable (as an example) was announced because they'd be busy enjoying their new games.
The only things that were actually dated were Halo Infinite and some smaller projects, ultimately Infinite was delayed to 2021 so people knew what the line-up was as Series X launched Nov 2020 and Infinite was delayed in August 2020...You can't really say that Microsoft hid how anaemic their launch line-up was, Lol. Their Holiday 2021 was great though with Infinite, Forza Horizon 5 and Psychonauts 2 and people were focused on that, not on "where is State of Decay 3" but then 2022 happened. I get being "sad" or "disappointed" that some games haven't released yet but I also don't think it's fair to attack developers over it (not what you're doing, what others do) and I don't think it's worth being overly pissed off about, Lol.
And it's not that we can't discuss one issue because there are bigger issues, I've always hated that argument, Lol. It's more that, Imo, I don't consider this an issue at all, Lmao. It sometimes to me feels like complaining just for the sake of it...Like for example, I'm buying GTA 6 on day one, I fully expect a delay into 2026 but I really don't care, Lol. I'm a huge Mass Effect fan so I was happy when it was announced but since then I've barely thought about it because I don't need to, I'll resume my hype when it's near release.
Speaking as a Fable fan, I love that series and I was one of those I mentioned above of gamers demanding a game be announced, Lmao. I wanted to see the tone/atmosphere they were going for, I just wanted to see Fable again and when it was announced I was like "AWESOME" and then...I moved on, lol. I don't need to think about Fable until the next trailers, I'm so swamped in current videogames that I don't have the time to sit here and complain that Fable still hasn't release yet when I have so many other awesome games to play. Let em cook, I'll play it when I play it.
And like said before, early announcements are often done for hiring purposes, they're as much for hiring as they are for the consumers (if not more) because this industry is extremely secretive and crammed full of NDAs. Some people won't have a clue what they're applying for/working on exactly until they're literally in their in the interview and have signed an NDA, Lol. Developers are gamers just as much as we are and have their own favourites or love of a certain IP. Imagine you're a developer in France, love the Blade IP and have just found out Arkane is working on it, you're more likely to apply there.
The issue here as I see it, in the case of Xbox, is not that they announced stuff early, it's that they had fuck-all ready for 2020/2022 but if they did then I fully believe those things would have distracted most gamers from thinking constantly about "where is XYZ?!" and I don't think the anti-consumer argument can be applied to 3rd party publishers either as they don't have a console to sell to the consumer.
I've seen those GTA VI and Wolverine comments, Lmao. You can watermark "ALPHA ALPHA ALPHA ALPHA" all over footage and some people will still be like "Lul. Looks shit. Game is doomed" I feel like this happened at one point during Dead Space Remake's development as well but can't remember it exactly what people were moaning about. It can also apply to betas, there's a fine line between feedback and just plain old shitting on a game unnecessarily, I've seen countless games doomed and completely shit on for their graphics during a beta and gamers really don't seem to understand how much polishing happens in the final stages of development.
