http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?story=23797

Despite gamers often lamenting that there are "too many" good games coming out during the fourth quarter holiday period -- more than their wallets can handle -- they still appear to be finding ways to spend money during the period.

According to Electronic Entertainment Design and Research analyst Jesse Divnich, 43 percent of 2008's video game titles released in the fourth quarter. Fourth quarter sales accounted for 45 percent of total annual sales, indicating that the amount of titles released during Q4 supports quarterly sales proportions.

Divnich said, "The thoughts on releasing more games in Q4 seem to run analogous to expanding a sports stadium from holding 20,000 fans to 35,000 fans - if you can fill the seats, then the expansion is justified."

But he added, "This data does not suggest causation and there is no one-to-one correlation between release quantities and sales by quarter. Instead, the data suggests that other factors such as quality scores, variety of releases, marketing, and economical factors play a role in shaping quarterly sales for the industry."

The graph below shows the correlation between game releases and sales for prior years, as provided by EEDAR. Note that in every quarter, there is a close correlation between the number of titles released and the proportionate amount of sales:



Divnich also said that, going by game review score averages, there wasn't a great fluctuation of the percentage of 85 percent-plus releases from quarter to quarter, as seen below:



Divnich added, "The only significant change occurs with a decrease in “good” scoring titles (70 – 84) and an increase in those of poor quality (54 and below)."

Now, are so many games released 4th Q because there are huge sales, or are there huge sales because so many games are released?

Not to mean that the entire christmas rush is manufactured by the quantity of games released, but that it is boosted, and that if they were released more evenly, sales would be more even.

Either way, the sheer percentage sold in 4th Q surprised me. Personally, I do the least game shopping 4th Q because that's when I have the least disposable income, buying christmas crap for people, which usually isn't a game.

(Thus, christmas releases piss me off, because I might want the game, but I can't buy it either do to lack of money, or the russian roulette chance of getting it for christmas. At least my relatives have largely stopped combing the bargain bins for games for me these years.)

The only reason (well the main reason atleast) is because almost every game comes out after september! If games released more evenly throughout the year sales would be much closer but i still agree that Q4 would have the highest sales