It's a potential solution to the Q4 stampede that has made the closing months of the year so competitive for so long. On average there's gonna be new titles coming out every two weeks." "In fact I think it's one of the more popular times that I've seen. "You've got great titles coming out that entire time period," the GameStop exec says. This, Bright suggests, is why we've been seeing stronger Q1 slates in recent years - a trend set to continue with the likes of Kingdom Hearts 3, Crackdown 3, Anthem, Days Gone, Metro Exodus and Tom Clancy's The Division 2 all arriving between January and March 2019. He goes on to say that longer development cycles mean more and more publishers are willing to release titles when they're ready, rather than aiming for a pivotal selling period. "Publishers have recognised for a long time that if they launch so close to the holiday season, Black Friday in particular, they're not really properly positioned to take advantage of a key promotional time period" So this allows them to have a great period of fantastic sales when the game launches." Therefore you're not launching a brand new game that you can't be promotional with around the Black Friday time period. "You have to remember that game production starts years ahead of time, long before they know that RDR2 or anything else is coming, so they're looking at 'how do I maximise sales of my video game?' And the best way to do that is to move it up earlier in the year. "Part of it is that overall publishers have recognised for a long time that if they launch so close to the holiday season, Black Friday in particular, they're not really properly positioned to take advantage of a key promotional time period," he explains. Natually, no publisher has openly admitted they're avoiding head-on competition with Rockstar, but it's almost certainly a factor - although Bright offers another theory. Yet some publishers like EA and Bethesda have no fear in going up against Red Dead's October 26 arrival, with Battlefield launching a week before and Fallout 76 following just a fortnight later. Most notably, Assassin's Creed and Call of Duty are launching earlier than ever - by a full month, in the latter's case. Rockstar's presence was seemingly felt by the publishers who did attend E3, however, as more games announced release dates much earlier than their usual window. I mean, absolutely phenomenal interest in that game. "We had an exclusive Red Dead Collector's Edition that we put up for pre-order and it sold out in a day and a half. "Red Dead is going to be a top game of the year, hands down," Bright declares. Yet from the sounds of GameStop's experience with pre-orders, Rockstar's next epic hasn't exactly suffered from shunning the Los Angeles spotlight. Of course Red Dead Redemption 2, arguably the biggest release slated for 2018, was entirely absent from E3. I think when they introduced their battle royale mode that spurred a lot of consumer interest we're seeing pick-up from that." He continues: "Nintendo fans are definitely reacting, but we're also seeing an incredible reaction from the tried and true franchises like Call of Duty. We're also seeing great reaction from Pokémon Let's Go, both SKUs, and then of course people are trying to get their hands on the Pokéball as well. "Super Smash Bros is jumping right up to the top of the list. "Nothing beats Nintendo's overall announcements," he says. Nintendo, in particular, has benefitted from E3 2018 when it comes to grabbing the attention of GameStop customers, as Bright informs us that Switch sales doubled over the course of the week in the wake of the Smash Bros deep dive, plus ongoing enthusiasm for Pokémon. "You're kicking off with Call of Duty and going into Red Dead Redemption 2, then you have NBA and Assassin's Creed and Battlefield and then you're going all the way through December when you're ending up with Smash Bros and you've got Pokémon and Fallout 76 in November - that's a powerful holiday line-up." "I'm looking forward to an incredible Q4," he says. Vice president of merchandising Eric Bright tells us he's particularly pleased with the line-up for 2018's final quarter, in part because there is a solid spread of big and notable launches for the entire three month period. As usual, the bulk of the attention is on games due for release in the run-up to Christmas - the busiest time of the year for both the industry and the retailer. With that in mind, we caught up with GameStop in Los Angeles to gauge the company's reactions to the various revelations made towards the start the week. Amid the pomp and circumstance of E3, it's easy to forget one of the expo's oldest and perhaps more core functions: to inform retail about the biggest titles heading to market.
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