With summer coming to an end, the video game industry is finally picking up on some excellent games to be released. A couple of them are the multiplatform Batman: Arkham Asylum, Madden 10, and the Xbox Live exclusive Shadow Complex. Over the next few weeks, there will also be some key titles released like The Beatles Rock Band and Guitar Hero 5 to become available for multiplatform. However, the real homerun hitters, Halo 3 ODST and Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2, are being released in September and November respectively.

  With the success of each of those games predecessors, however, game publishers have been pushing back the release dates of games like Bioshock 2, Splinter Cell: Conviction, and Red Steel 2 to 2010. The real question is, though, is it worth it to push the release date of these games back?

  The largest (and most speculated about) reason the publishers are pushing back games is that many of the publishers are worried that their games won’t sell as well in a game market loaded with grade-A titles. For instance, Halo 3, COD 4, and Call of Duty: World at War have sold an absurd amount of titles and are still in the top three of most played online games on Xbox Live each month. With such a large fan base for each of the franchises, many experts are saying that Modern Warfare 2 will break records for the amount of money made on any one game. This idea is enough to scare away most of the publishers.

  Another reason that developers and publishers could be pushing back the release is that the games might not be ready yet, or not perfected. Take a game like Splinter Cell: Conviction. The first real game play footage of the game was shown at E3 (a gaming convention) back in May or June. It could be possible that the game wasn’t even close to being finished back then and pushing back the title just gave the developers some more time to finish it.

  But as for a game like Bioshock 2, however, I’m not so sure why the release date has changed. The game has been announced for quite some time now and the original game was very successful. The game got numerous Game-of-the-Year awards and was praised by reviewers and fans alike. Plus with the edition of a multiplayer mode, the game has a chance to be as good as or even better than its predecessor.

  Now it could be very possible that the games could have some bugs or glitches to work out, or even the fact that the game is being released on both Xbox 360 and PS3 simultaneously. Doing that could have slowed down the process, but that ploy was just so the publisher could make more money.

  While publishers might have pushed back games in order to earn more money, that plan might not have been the greatest at all. Games like God of War 3, a game that will most likely sell an enormous amount of copies and be widely successful, is coming out in the first quarter of 2010. Depending on when the games are released, the games still might not sell as well as the publisher might like. Also, the pushed backed games will miss the holiday season, a time when the majority of games are bought and a lot of money is generated for the gaming industry. 

  Gamers shouldn’t worry though, because plenty of grade-A titles are still being released the rest of this year. Games like Tekken 6, Uncharted 2 for the PS3, Forza 3 and Left 4 Dead 2 are still going to be released this year. Tekken 6 is the next title in the popular fighting game series and the first to be released on next-gen consoles. Uncharted 2 is a sequel to the first game, Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune. The game looks beautiful and now has a new cover system and from what I’ve seen the game is going to be excellent. Forza 3, the third title in the Forza series, is offering gamers new customization options and some impressive new graphics. Left 4 Dead 2 is a sequel to one of my favorite games of 2008, Left for Dead. L4D2 takes the original games awesome multiplayer and adds new weapons and a new locale to keep things exciting.   

  There is also one more game that I’m looking forward to. The name of the game is Scribblenauts and it is coming out for the DS. Scribblenauts takes the idea of “Anything you write, you can use,” and takes it to an extreme level. The game will give the player a situation like a whale being stuck on a beach and the game will ask the gamer to get the whale back into the ocean. Now, what the gamer will have to decide is how he or she will get the whale into the ocean. Does one want to use a crane and lift the whale into the ocean? Or maybe the gamer want to try and use a catapult and see if they can fling the whale back into the ocean. All the player has to do is write the word on the touch screen part of the DS and the item will appear in the game and try to complete the objective. The game also encourages the use of a player’s imagination. Want to see if you can get the whale into the ocean by turning it into a zombie? Write zombie and find out what happens to the whale. It’s that kind of creative exploration that the game lets someone use that’s exciting.   

  So in closing, even though a lot of marquee titles have been pushed back to 2010, that doesn’t outweigh the amount of good games coming out for the rest of the year. There’s still a lot to be excited for during the upcoming holiday season.