Red Dead Redemption is now a major brand- the original game was one of the most critically acclaimed games of all time, widely beloved, and sold over 14 million copies worldwide. Red Dead Redemption 2 is already one of the most anticipated games of the coming year- and with Rockstar coming off of the success of Grand Theft Auto 5, which broke every record there is in the book, and became the highest selling game of all time, it’s expected to sell pretty well, too.
That is because, according to Michael Goodman, who is the director of digital media strategies at Strategy Analytics, Red Dead Redemption 2 is the rare breed of must have title that will do well no matter when it is released.
“Whether or not Red Dead 2 fits within a certain launch window, this is a must-have title and it doesn’t matter when [Rockstar Games] launches it. It can take on all-comers in fourth quarter or there is other stuff in fourth quarter that might hurt sales a bit. If that’s the case then they’ll have to take a look and say, ‘well, am I better off launching it during a different time of the year?’” Goodman said in an interview with We Write Things.
“People talk about the second quarter being a dead period for games, but I think it’s more of a function of companies haven’t launched product then. It’s not necessarily that people won’t spend in the second quarter, it’s that games haven’t launched in the second quarter,” Goodman continued, adding, “I think one of, and I’m borrowing a page from Microsoft when I talk about this, I just quite frankly think it makes sense. [Rockstar Games] is trying to spread out their launches instead of trying to dump everything in the fourth quarter. They’re are only so many dollars to be had where if you just spread [out the releases], you’ll quite frankly find that much more success.”
I can’t really say that I necessarily disagree with much, if any, of his reasoning- though I do firmly maintain that no matter what part of the year Red Dead come out, it will do as well as it would have done anyway. This is not a game that will be affected by something as petty as release schedules for other games.
