Quantic Dream co-CEO Guillaume de Fondaumiere has stated that Heavy Rain was pushed back to 2010 in order to give the PS3 exclusive its own release window. Heavy Rain is among many titles that have been pushed back in order to avoid a Christmas dominated by such releases as Modern Warfare 2 and Assassin’s Creed 2, but Quantic Dream is one of the few developers to have admitted its reasons for a delay.
“The first and most important reason [for the delay] was the fact that I don’t think that such an innovative game like Heavy Rain and a new franchise should be released at the end of the year in the crowded period when everyone’s releasing there games,” explained Fondaumiere. “A game like Heavy Rain needs space, needs to be explained and shown. At the end of the year, people can’t afford to buy all those games so we wanted to give Heavy Rain the chance to have its own release window, and for us to really talk about it so people really understand it.
“If Heavy Rain doesn’t succeed it’s going to have important implications for other developers and for ourselves — maybe people will think ‘those innovative games don’t work, games cannot really convey realistic emotions.’ And they will continue to do the standard shooters and the like that we have been doing for however many years.”
Quantic Dream has the right idea, but unfortunately about a dozen other games had the same idea as well. Something tells me that early 2010 has now become even more congested than pre-Christmas 2009 will be, since so many publishers had the same brainwave at the exact same time. I really hope that, in order to avoid a clogged 2009, the industry hasn’t simply created a clogged 2010.
