2013 is gearing up to be another epic year to be a gamer. Up until March there are highly anticipated games to be set to be leased, and while this is great for us as gamers, I believe Sony made a huge mistake when they rescheduled Sly Cooper Thieves in Time to a February release date. So here are 2 ways Sucker Punch potentially hurt Sly Cooper and his time back in the spotlight.
#2. Missing the Holiday Season
Sly Cooper has a pretty large following, I myself bought the entire collection on PSN when it came out. Not counting the HD releases Sony hasn’t released a Sly Cooper game since the PlayStation 2 era. The Holiday Season would have been the prefect time for his return to the big screen. If Thieves in Time was released in November it would have had the perfect window of opportunity to really boost its sales. Releasing in the holidays could have also raised some more interest in the game from non fans.
PlayStation All Stars is coming out in November and Sly Cooper has already been announced as part of the roster, Sony could have easily turned the hype for him as a character in PlayStation All Stars into potential sales for Thieves in Time. Most importantly there are’nt may games being released later this year that are garnering much attention. Thieves in Time could have benefited immensely from the lack of competition, instead they now have to deal with …
#1. Too Much Competition
You know what could harm Sly Cooper: Thieves in Time the most, the other games it now has to compete with for your money. Budgeting purchases when big releases all happen to fall in the same month or week is a skill that most gamers acquire. Now that Thieves in Time just happens to be coming out around the same time as highly anticipated games like Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance, Bioshock Infinite,DmC (Yes, some people are looking forward to that) and Tomb Raider.
On one hand Sly Cooper is a great franchise, on the other hand Sly has lost his relevance, how much of a statement can he make with his first next-gen iteration for him to succeed. I’m not saying the game will do poorly, just the opposite in fact. Thieves in Tim will do … alright but it could have done much better if it wasn’t stifled by the stiff competition it has to deal with now.
All that being said, I hope Sly does well and proves me wrong. I’ll be picking this up myself sometime after I get bored of cutting people into sashimi in Metal Gear Rising: Revengance.
