Game makers slowly shift to year-round sales emphasis: 'first-person shooters' likely to remain staple of holidays.

Christmas all year? They'll take it!

Just as the two leading digital animation film studios, Pixar and DreamWorks Animation SKG, said they would be releasing their blockbusters in early summer, major videogame makers are eyeing a year-round selling season to spread their traditional holiday sales boom.

The last three months of the year will likely remain the cornerstone for local game makers THQ Inc. and Activision Inc., which along with the major movie studios jockey for the best release dates. As much as 50 percent of a company's revenues and 70 percent of its profits are made in the fourth quarter.

But an aging cohort of garners is widening the sales sweet spot.

"As the industry has matured, we've seen great windows for retail all year long," said Peter Dille, senior vice president of Worldwide marketing at Calabasas Hills-based THQ. "Movies are popular at Christmas, but people go to movies all year long. People want to play new games all year long. There's no reason to say everything has to go out at Christmas."

That's because the videogame industry is no longer just a kids' business. The average garner is 29 years old and has the cash to purchase a game without having to wait for morn or dad in December.

The process of determining when to release a game can go on for three years, taking into account the competition, the development schedule and movie tie-ins. "So much is at stake," said Arvind Bhatia, associate director of research for Southwest Securities. "Timing is so important and these guys pay a lot of attention to that. You don't want to make a mistake."

It's still the season

Activision, based in Santa Monica, still sees the holidays as the time to release its games. More than half its roughly dozen 2004 titles were released between September and December.

Its fourth quarter releases include movie tie-in "Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events," "Call of Duty: Finest Hour," and "Tony Hawk's Underground 2."

For THQ, holiday releases include movie tie-in games "The Incredibles," "The SpongeBob SquarePants Movie" videogame and "The Polar Express." It also released TV tie-in "WWE Smackdown vs. Raw" and "Tak 2: Staff of Dreams."

"November and December represent far and away the largest part of industry sales, so you clearly want to have your product out in time to benefit," said Kathy Vrabeck, president of Activision Publishing in Santa Monica. "You don't want to launch something in January if you could have had it out in October and taken advantage of holiday sales."

Perhaps, but rival THQ is taking a January plunge. The company will ship "The Punisher," a game based on a Marvel comic character and aimed at the hard-core audience, after the New Year in order to avoid competing with Take 2 Interactive's "Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas" and Microsoft Game Studio's "Halo 2" for the Xbox game system, which are also aimed at the same hard-core gamers.

"We didn't want 'The Punisher' to be overshadowed by hype around other games," said Dille. "As movie studios move around their slate for competitive reasons, we do the same."

In fact, January is the second-biggest month for game sales after December, spurred by new hardware under the Christmas tree and "grandma money" or gift cards. Dille believes it's a good time for a release.

Activision took a different tack in responding to the release of "Grand Theft Auto" and "Halo 2," moving up the release of "Tony Hawk's Underground 2" to the first week of October.

"You can secure a lot more retail placement," said Vrabeck. "We want to have big ads and displays when titles come out."

How well the strategy worked is hard to tell. "Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas" was the best-selling game in October, with "Tony Hawk's Underground 2" coming in fourth.

It takes anywhere from 18 to 30 months to bring a game from concept to store shelves, said Vrabeck, noting that Activision is now thinking about what titles it will release in 2007. Marketing strategy depends on the game.

Less flexible are movie tie-ins. Twenty percent of THQ's titles this year are linked to films, including "The Incredibles," "The SpongeBob SquarePants Movie" and "The Polar Express," while a third of Activision's titles were, including "Spider-Man 2," "Shrek 2," "Lemony Snicket" and "Shark Tale."

"The Incredibles" game came out a week before the film and "SpongeBob" came out two weeks before the film.

"Our thinking was that 'SpongeBob' was a known property with huge equity on television and it had a huge audience already in love with him," Dille said. With "The Incredibles," he said, most people were likely to see the movie first, then gravitate to the licensed product, which is why it was launched closer to the film.

Like the book business, the videogame industry also has its mix of new-release blockbusters and perennial big-sellers.

Core gamers tend to be the target of the big release that carries a lot of promotional attention and is created for the latest gaming platform. Kids and families tend to be year-round buyers less concerned with having the newest console.

Because there is talk of a new PlayStation platform from Nintendo Co., THQ is putting a lot of product out now knowing that garners who aren't hardcore buyers will continue to look for games for the older platform.

"We'll sell Nickelodeon for the back-haft PS2 lifecycle for many years to come," Dille said. "But we've got to make sure we've got products to put on the shelf and we're focusing our attention on what the new systems can do."