‘Absolute madness’: retail bemoans shooter pile-up

The three biggest games of the year will all come out within weeks of one another.

Last week at the Star Wars Celebration in California, EA announced that Star Wars: Battlefront will launch on November 20th. The game will compete with Halo 5: Guardians (out October 27th) and Call of Duty: Black Ops III (due out in-between those two dates).

All three are tipped to be the must-have titles of 2015, but UK stores have warned that releasing them so close may put off some gamers.

Absolute madness,” one leading retail buyer told MCV. These games will be big sellers. But releasing them so close to one another will force consumers to choose, and they may hold-off pre-ordering. I’m excited, but with such a barren release schedule during the rest of the year, they could have spread them apart a little bit.”

Tesco games buyer Jon Ferdenzi added: It’s certainly going to be a challenge at retail, but I’d rather have too many titles released than nothing at all.”