Friday, November 05, 2004

No Lions Were Harmed or Religiously Converted In the Writing of This Post

Here are some assorted bits of information about release dates:
--World of Warcraft has a November 23 release date. I believe this is going to be one of those games where people don't leave their apartments for a week as they play it continuously. Almost any game can do that, but this is one of those games where people will brag about it. Congratulations on your level 39 dwarven grocer, sir.
--The Halo 2 (Xbox) street date was temporarily broken by a midwestern retail chain called Meijer's. Presumably all offending clerks were rounded up and executed.
--In yet another sophisticated marketing move, Valve has announced that they will be pissing us off again. Half-Life 2 will be released at 12:00 a.m. on November 16. That's 12:00 a.m. Seattle time, or GMT-8. All over. So any retail stores that wanted to have a midnight launch party are out of luck unless they're in the western U.S. Midnight launch parties are fun, but somehow I doubt that any stores here in Austin are going to open at 2 a.m. It will be great for Europe, though.

My opinion last year was that Valve made brilliant games and that they were shrewd marketers. All I can say now is--those games sure are brilliant, huh?

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