As a critic with a vague desire to see this medium grow in interesting ways, I spend my year picking through the rough and finding the very occasional diamond, but October and November are the months when I allow myself to be reminded that the people with the money are sometimes the people with the sense, when it isn’t necessary to look to the indies to find a stream of interesting ideas.

Last year it was Fallout 3, Fable 2, LittleBigPlanet and Mirror’s Edge; the year before that it was Bioshock, The Orange Box and Super Mario Galaxy. It’s what we live for; it keeps us going.

This year, however, the whole industry got together and decided to ruin my Christmas: Red Dead Redemption, Bioshock 2, Mass Effect 2, Heavy Rain, Max Payne 3, Mafia II; every last glorious one pushed back until 2010. And guess what? I can’t wait that long with only Sam Fisher, Soap MacTavish, Master Chief’s less popular cousin and whatever they’re calling Altair these days for company. Don’t get me wrong, I like them, but they tend to mimic their friends, and this time I get the feeling they’ll all just be repeating themselves. If it wasn’t for The Ballad of Gay Tony, I’d hibernate.

Now, I don’t care if it’s through fear of Modern Warfare 2, a genuine desire on the part of Bioware, Rockstar, 2K Marin and 2K Czech to make their games the best they can be, or an even mixture of the two; if I’m going to be forced to watch television, go out for walks and talk to my family this holiday season I demand that the industry attempt to learn something from my ordeal.

Since the very start of this console generation the heads of every major publisher have preached the need to spread major releases throughout the year, but with the exception of Nintendo, nobody’s had the stones to lead the way: last November, 300 games were released across all formats; this November, 100 games are scheduled for to hit the shelves in a single week.

I can’t conceive of how this arrangement benefits anyone, and yet it persists. It feels like an agonisingly long hangover from the days when the vast majority of gamers were children, and relied on their parents’ festive generosity for a fix. These are no longer the prevalent market conditions, and I’d argue that the majority of people queuing for their copy of Uncharted 2 or God Of War III are now buying it for themselves – the average, 21st Century core gamer is older than 12, and actually has disposable income.  

I have my fingers firmly crossed for March 2010 to be the most lucrative in the industry’s history. If it comes to pass, we might soon be able to lead rich and varied gaming lives for twelve months rather than three, and I can ignore my family the whole year round.

By Matt Handrahan: games™