Bethesda: November schedule "healthy" for the industry
Pete Hines claims crowded release schedule is good publicity for the industry, though some will fail
Bethesda's vice president Pete Hines believes that the crush of high profile releases at the end of the year could have a positive effect on the industry.
November will be one of the most crowded months for blockbuster releases on record, with Uncharted 3, Call Of Duty: Modern Warfare 3, Assassin's Creed: Revelations, Saints Row: The Third and Need For Speed: The Run all scheduled for release in the space of a few weeks.
Bethesda's The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim is also due for release in November, with id Software's Rage falling in October, but Hines takes a positive view of the intense competition.
"It's probably healthy for the industry because the industry gets a lot of attention when there's all these things happening," he said in an interview with Eurogamer. "Just like the movie industry gets a lot of buzz when there's a bunch of really big things at the movies and everyone's talking about them all."
However, while the attention drawn by so many big releases could raise public awareness of the industry, Hines conceded that the situation is just likely to result in failure for some of the games involved.
"It's probably not healthy for everyone who has one of those titles, because as you rightly pointed out usually someone gets the short end of the stick. Someone ends up falling short and not doing quite what they expected to do."
The question is which will be found wanting, but Hines is confident that Bethesda's products will meet expectations.
"We're feeling very good about both Rage and Skyrim and very good about our line-up for this holiday season," he added.
In an interview with GamesIndustry.biz in April, Hines accused studios that become reliant on a single product for their continued survival of "poor management."
"It would be wholly irresponsible for us to build towards a company that released three or four big games a year and then have our well being fall apart if any one of those doesn't do well," he said at the time. "That would be poor management on our part... We've been built smarter and better than that."
"I certainly hate to see those kinds of things, but I think when you see it, it relates to them and their business."