this is a question i’ve asked myself a lot of times, maybe some of you have an answer to this?
the whole summer: NOTHING!!! not a single game worth playing.
and now upcoming within the next month?
Fear
Quake IV
Burnout Revenge
Mortal Kombat Shaolin Monks
Fahrenheit
…
does anyone understand that? which kid has time to play a game when there’s school? and quake 4 and fear are released with 1 week difference to each other. where is the sense in that?
thanks for brightening up my mind 
its quite simple… marketing
think abotu ti liek this… the average kid will not buy all those games b/c he wont have enough money or want too after he hears about them from his friends. SO if you try to release ur game around hte same time as another you create competition, the kid will probably only end up buying one, so why not do a huge advertisement campaign and release in teh same time frame to take the kids money so then while hes playing the game he bought, he hears all the ups and mostly downs of the games he did not buy, then he dosnt buy any of the otehr games, unless the pros outweight the cons by alot. So by releasing at the same time you pretty much get the msot impulsive (or deidcated sometimes in cases of seguals) kids buying the games. If they were all strung out far apart then the kid would buy one, then the next, then the next, and before you know it, when it comes time for your company to release its 2nd game, the kid has no money left b/c he spent it on the the other games. So its pretty much about money. Enjoy making your decision!
thanks for pointing that out. makes sense somehow eg spaking of “mouth propaganda” in schools. in summer you wouldn’t have that.
still the fact remains that a kid’s money is limited and it can’t buy all the games that are released. besides the danger of “trading” those games in schools is high as well.
dont kids these days like go out after school finished to talk to each other? and hang out during the summer or was that just me?
also parents wont have much money in the summer to buy their kids games as they forked out loads for holidays and kids of certain age depend on their parents to buy them everything. Makes sense to me to release in the autumn/fall, parents have more money, crap weather so you be indoors more often etc etc…
that doesn’t change the fact that it seems that i don’t belong to any consumer class and hence nobody wants my hard earned money 
ever since ET was released my fav multiplayer game of the summer remains ET because all others sucked. oh how do i hope that ET:QW will be released before summer 
Well it would be nice if game companies wouldn’t only release games during “holiday” seasons. If the game is good, it WILL sell… it’s as simple as that. Just lookg at Warcraft 3. It was released on July 3rd 2002 (read as NOT Christmas Season) and by July 22nd sold over 1 million copies. I just wish game companies would focus more on making the game GOOD, than rushing it out the door for the Holiday push.