NONE LEFT!

So here we are into the new year and a slew of new games to look forward to, as long as we can afford them.  The next few months have tonnes of quality releases to look forward to, I’m not going to bother to list them as that’s not my point here, my point is about who was first out the blocks in 2009. 

It’s been over a month since we have had any new releases as such and a great may people look forward to the first big release in the year. A few years ago I remember getting and hugely enjoying Lost Planet, on its January release.  The first major release this year is Lord of the Rings Battlefront, oops, I mean Conquest, a game that I have been watching with some interest owing to my liking of the Battlefront series.

Lord of the Rings Conquest was released on Friday 16th of January and normally I would have gone out and got it straight away, but for reasons outside of my control I couldn’t get to the shops until Saturday.  Walking around my local game shops I noticed all the Conquest posters and the like but there was a worrying lack of any boxes on the shelves.  Instead of asking if they had any stock I walked around a few shops checking out the stock until I realised that NONE of the shops had any any!  This has happened before as I remember, I think it was with DOA 3 a few years ago. It could be that many people received an Xbox 360 for Christmas and just want a new game to play or it could be that not enough stock has been sent out.  Thing is from what I have read, the game hasn’t been getting great reviews but people are buying the game en masse, indeed I still want to get it regardless, but at this moment in time I can’t.

All this makes me wonder if a high profile game that was rushed out for Christmas was delayed until January, it might have gotten more attention than it received in the pre-Christmas rush.  A few games that spring to mind in this vein are Banjo Kazooie, Nuts and Bolts or Endwar, both are good games but got lost in the end of year rush.  The charts for next week will surely put Conquest in the top spot, Skate 2 is due out and may trump Conquest – both games are published by EA so maybe they really do know the game.  I would love to see more publishers delaying releases into the new year and we all may get to fully play more games to the end before the next game comes along.  Think of all the great games that have been lost when a January release could have spelled success for them.  Anyway I’m off out to track down a copy of Conquest just for the sake of it.