Video Games Fight for Shelf Space

Since 2003, Activision Blizzard’s Call of Duty shooter franchise has been such a juggernaut that few video game rivals dared stray into its blast radius. This holiday season, competitors are sending a different message: game on. “We’re launching Battlefield 3,” Electronic Arts Chief Executive Officer John Riccitiello said in April. The first-person military shooter, set to come out on Oct. 25, is “designed to take that game down.”

It’s shaping up to be a particularly bloody holiday season in the gaming industry. While most years see only a few blockbuster releases, this fall there are nearly a dozen, including the latest installments of Microsoft’s Gears of War and Halo franchises and id Software’s Rage, along with Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 and Battlefield 3. The onslaught is driven in part by desperation. Packaged games’ sales peaked in 2008, according to researcher DFC Intelligence. They’ve taken a pummeling this year, with sales falling to five-year lows as consumers increasingly turn away from game consoles and toward all-purpose mobile devices such as Apple’s iPads and social networks such as Facebook. The video game outpouring might salvage a year of lackluster sales, but it could harm the industry if the pileup produces a drought of top titles next year, says J. Paul Raines, CEO of retailer GameStop. “The challenge, for us and for the consumer, is that all this hits within a space of six to eight weeks,” he says. “We’d certainly have preferred it to be spread out.”