By Nelson Schneider - 06/29/14 at 01:11 PM CT
Welcome to another look into the near future. Last month’s gentle start to the Summer Game Drought has given way to a full-blown, apocalypse-level dearth of new titles for July. El Niño may be deluging parts of the United States that have been drought-stricken for the better part of a decade, but his expertise in rain doesn’t do diddly with regard to the games industry.
How bad is the drought this year? Well, how about a whopping 6 titles slated for a July release? Is that sparse enough?
Not only are the releases unbearably thin in July, but the quality is even lower than usual.
There are TWO licensed games coming in July. One is based on the abominably-drawn anime “One Piece.” It will be hitting the odd combination of PS3 and 3DS. The other is yet another LEGO tie-in, this time involving ninjas and handheld consoles.
There is ONE ‘grown-up’ FPS coming in July: The drab military shooter sequel “Sniper Elite III.” Of course, it will be hitting every platform under the sun.
Miraculously, all three hardware manufacturers are getting a single exclusive in July. Of course, when Nintendo’s exclusive is a disc-based full version of a remake of “WiiSports,” Sony’s exclusive is a PS4 ‘HD’ remake of the already-HD “The Last of Us,” and Microsoft’s exclusive is… a port of the PC game “Tropico 5,” there is really little to feel confident about.
July looks to be a generalized embarrassment for the games industry as a whole. Six games. All crap, or remakes, or remakes of crap. I guess it’s for the best, considering the Steam Summer Sale just added a bunch of previously-released games to everyone’s backlog anyway. With nothing new to worry about, we can all dedicate our time to stuff we already own.
Backlog Embiggened: +0
