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By Nelson Schneider - 04/27/13 at 03:32 PM CT
Welcome to another look into the near future. May is the traditional start of the Summer Game Drought… and boy is the drought coming on strong and fast! This month holds the smallest number of releases since I started covering upcoming games in the ‘Backlog: The Embiggening’ series of articles. With two new consoles on the horizon and the WiiU deserving a re-boxing, I can only hope that the even-more-drastic-than-usual drop-off in game releases this May is indicative of developers shifting focus to new hardware, and they just haven’t had the time to finish their 8th Generation inaugural projects.
The most frightening occurrence this month is that there are ZERO licensed games or shovelware on the docket. How is that even possible?! Sure, we all fantasize about a games industry that doesn’t make terrible tie-in games or super-casual shovelware… but now that we’re actually getting a month without them, the release schedule looks remarkably, impossible thin.
There are only 4 multi-platform titles scheduled for release in May. Let’s see… a first-person shooter, a third-person shooter that was delayed from last month, and two non-kart racing games, “GRID 2” and “Fast & Furious: Showdown” (Is that last one a licensed game tied-into “The Fast and the Furious” movies?). Snooooooore.
In the realm of exclusives, May is a complete disaster. The WiiU looks like it’s finally getting a bunch of exclusive third-party releases… but in actuality it is getting three warmed-over ports of old multi-platform games. The only other exclusive release this month is “Donkey Kong Country Returns 3D” for the 3DS… but that’s not even a new game, but a port of “Donkey Kong Country Returns” from the original Wii with the 3DS’ obnoxious 3D gimmick tacked on. Even worse, the PlayStation Vita isn’t getting ANY games in May, leaving the crazy people who bought Sony’s overpriced paperweight wondering exactly what they can do with it besides play digital versions of PSP games.
May looks to be an incredibly depressing month for game releases. Even worse, the promised release of “DuckTales Remastered” has been pushed-back from May to September. With the complete disrespect for deadlines being expressed by game developers since the start of the 7th Generation, it’s no surprise to see the only game I was looking forward to in May pushed-back 4 months… but when it comes down to it, I’d much rather see Wayforward and Capcom release “DuckTales Remastered” when it’s ready than have them release it NOW as a broken pile of glitches. The good news is: No embiggening for my backlog this month! But that’s the entire purpose of a backlog – to provide an anti-boredom buffer that can take effect when new releases hit a drought as parching as May’s.
Backlog Embiggened: +0
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