2013: The New 2012

Now, I know I keep hammering in the point, but 2012 is pretty much jam-packed with a bunch of games that I am going to have to buy which is an entirely new scenario for me (I think the count is up to twelve), and in pointing that out a lot, I've complained that, well, they're all coming out this year.  And it seems that a lot of studios have realized this as well and have responded....by delaying their games to the first Quarter of 2013.  Like, all of them.  This doesn't so much as handle a problem for many (Including me, unfortunately, as not a single game that has been delayed was one I was really really looking into buying, save for -maybe- Tomb Raider and South Park), but rather pushes it further off into time.  As in, the start of the year.  Of course, we have kind of been introduced to this concept in the last few years, wherein Q1 tends to....'affectionately' get referred to as "Christmas 2" since it's basically the Holiday Rush after the Holiday Rush.  There's really no simpler way to put it.

If you need a little scope on the amount of delays we've had, here's a little list for you:  Tomb Raider, South Park:  The Stick of Truth, Aliens:  Colonial Marines, DmC Devil May Cry, X-COM, Bioshock:  Infinite, Leisure Suit Larry in the Land of the Lounge Lizards HD, Ni no Kuni and Metro:  Last Light.  Mind you, the bulk of these are only fairly recently relayed as delayed, with a little bit of digging required for the last few, but just because they weren't delayed this week doesn't mean anything.  This is on top of the other games that were delayed that I haven't spotted, as well as the games that are, well, just slated to release in Q1 2013.  I don't know of very many and searching isn't producing very many results, but I'm sure there are some and especially so after E3, since I'm sure a lot of the games announced there will be slated for late 2012 (damnit all) or early 2013.

So, the above, that right there is a list of nine games that are, essentially, overspill, since while some of them are being moved so that they'll be done, I imagine a couple of them are there so as to try and avoid competition which...isn't going to work too well now.  And of those nine games, at least three of them are pretty high-profile releases where two others are definitely games to watch out for, if not high-profile to a certain niche of people.  (Looking at you Ni no Kuni.  As I always am.  Sigh...)  This is....well, this is completely the scenario of this year repeating itself into the next and it's fairly worrisome.  Especially for me since, well, I already have enough Vita games I'm looking at through to the end of the year, and it's going to start hitting its stride next year as the games that all the other studios who -finally- got a Vita Dev Kit, having chosen to not get it before the system came out for one reason or another, or have just been bad at time management, will start seeing announcements and releases as well.  Because there are games, I assure you.

I suppose it's only a good thing that there is this much of a glut of games coming out to be excited about, since it means hours upon hours of entertainment for us.  Of course, that comes at the price of, well, the prices of all these games, as they are not cheap individually, and especially so when you have several coming out in a cluster as they seem to be doing for...well, every season between now and Spring of next year.  As such, we all have to just figure out which can be held off on for times when wallets are not so strained, nor is the time.  Of course it might seem like those times do not exist and, in all reality, they might not for a while, but again, that's the good part about it all.  You just have to remember that those good experiences will definitely be worth it, provided they're good enough to make a real impression on you and for the games that are in the line-up from now until Q2 2013, a lot of them carry just that potential.  We'll just have to see how many of them actually make it, though.

Update!:  This isn't really an update so much as it is thumping my chest.  Obviously, the delays are a big enough deal that Joystiq got the same idea I did, to write up a little post about the games that have been delayed.  Our lists are pretty similar for obvious reasons, but they neglected to mention X-COM and Leisure Suit Larry HD (I wonder why.), where I didn't list Prey 2 because I have no idea what Prey 2 is other than a game that sure isn't coming out in 2012 nor Q1 2013, which is what I tried to focus on.  Well played, Joystiq!