The Video Game Scale of Holiday Proximity

Every year we make jokes about Christmas starting just a hair earlier. The truth is that the season starts at about the same time every year with decorations going on sale the day after Halloween and the shopping season kicking into full gear right around Thanksgiving.

However, because Christmas is really more of an economic extravaganza than anything else, it can be said that the material aspects of the holiday do kick into gear a little earlier each year. It’s just a matter of when that must have item is released and how late parents are willing to wait for an item before it hits the "wait until Christmas" list of things they will buy for their children.

One of my favorite demographics for looking at this kind of growth is that of video gaming. A couple of decades ago, video games were a niche item, something that kids were all too happy to receive. The prices were outrageous though and just having a friend with a Nintendo was usually enough.

Today, the market has exploded to the point that everyone has a video gaming console and the market has developed beyond that of a simple niche, holiday gift market. It does remain, however, a very good gauge of when the Christmas shopping season begins and just how big it will be.

The New Generation

The last set of consoles, the Playstation 2 and Xbox arrived at the turn of the new millennium in 2000 and 2001 respectively. Both consoles pushed video gaming beyond its niche archetype and into the mainstream, thanks to mass production, high quality and constant crossover between genres and mediums. The new era of gaming meant a new form of entertainment and a new perspective on the gaming industry by those who might have considered it too "juvenile" in the past.

That brought about the new generation which represents the culmination of those changes, along with the overwhelming growth of the industry that has finally allowed certain video game franchises to be compared to massively successful films, creating record crossovers onto the big screen and into merchandise.

The really big contender in this field is that of Halo 3, the newest release from Microsoft that on its first day alone sold more than $175 million worth discs. By comparison, Spiderman 3 opened with a $150 million first weekend. Sure Halo 3 discs cost 6 times as much as a Spiderman 3 ticket, but the comparison is still apt as millions of games sold in on single day, a feat usually withheld for the mainstream media.

And the Holiday Season Has Begun?

Does that mean the ushering in of the Holiday shopping season has already begun? Not quite yet, though it stands to reason that the recent spike in Xbox 360 sales that went along with the release of Halo 3 will continue along with the high sales of the game into December. It is indicative of the crowded release schedule and the attempts, by all parties, to squeeze in all of their major releases within the three month period that proceeds Christmas every year.

The last two years saw the release of the major consoles, the Xbox 360, the Playstation 3, and the Nintendo Wii. This year and those to follow therefore will be home to hundreds of top tier titles and because there are so many, the release dates get pushed further and further back towards summer. Typically dull months for game releases (kids tend to actually head outside when the sun is shining) May through August don’t usually host such major releases as Bioshock or Metroid Prime 3, but this year they did as the gaming companies needed to dilute their release schedules a bit to make way for Christmas.

Even Halo 3, the most anticipated game of all time, was released in September to give Microsoft time to sell more consoles and market their other winter releases. Nintendo and Microsoft will continue to release their major titles this fall as well, including the first true Mario game in 10 years in Mario Galaxy, the follow up to Nintendo’s major smash hit, Super Smash Bros, and dozens more major releases across the board.

The season is upon us then and though we can probably not expect to see a gaming related product selling for $10,000 on eBay in anticipation of Christmas day being only a few short weeks away, the chances are still quite good that rush on your local Best Buy and Gamestop stores will be just as significant as ever as the gaming industry has blossomed into one of the four lynchpins of entertainment media, even managing to surpass some of the most popular and enduring franchises around.

While Halo has already emerged as one of the quintessential denominators of this generation’s cultural identity, dozens more properties and developments are sure to arrive and make it even more obvious that video gaming is a regular aspect of our culture, all the more so during the Holiday season.