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Hollow Knight: Silksong's release was great for many, not so great for some.
"Hello and welcome back to GRTV News, I'm Alex, as always going through the afternoons latest and greatest when it comes to gaming, technology, entertainment, whatever you like and indeed whatever you love, we always have it here for you at GRTV News and in the wider Gamereactor network as a whole."
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Without further ado though today, we're talking an interesting piece of news about Hollow Knight Silksong, well not specifically Hollow Knight Silksong if I have to say because we're more talking about the launch of Silksong and the impact that it had."
"So we know that a lot of games actually avoided launching in the same period as Hollow Knight Silksong because it was sort of announced during Gamescom that we were going to be getting a release date and the release date was the 4th of September which was the date that Hell is Us also launched."
"Now Hell is Us did not back down, it did not move from that release date but it did acknowledge through it's creative director Jonathan Jacques-Balotet that there are a lot of other factors that might go into that so obviously you might think well if he's describing it as he does in this article here as the GTA 6 of indie then you might want to get out of the way of that but the problem was that we were so late in the day, Hollow Knight Silksong's release date was revealed about 2 weeks before it actually launched so while not a direct shadow drop it sort of felt like one to a lot of people, especially Jacques-Balotet as he said in Skillop's Friends Per Second podcast where he spoke about the unfortunate situation that Road Factor, the developer of Hell is Us, found itself in when it had to launch at the same time as Silksong."
"So he said here, when you know you're that big I think a shadow drop is a bit like wow, as the GTA 6 of indie to shadow drop something like this is a little palace.
He also said that it definitely affected the sales of Hell is Us, he's not got specific figures on that but he would say that it definitely sort of impeded that launch and it's not surprising that that's the case considering that Hollow Knight Silksong again made a huge buzz about that September 4th release date because it didn't have any pre-orders, it didn't have advanced access, it didn't even have reviews so the only way to get an impression of the game was by buying it and by playing it which meant that obviously everyone's going to buy it and they're going to play it because there was so much hype around it."
"He also said a bit about the release date itself that he didn't want to move it because that would have meant refunding all of the people who pre-ordered for the game and that was something that Nacon, the publisher of the game, didn't want to do either but there were conversations about moving the release date."
"It's worth noting as well that Hell is Us had locked in it's release date pretty early on this year when it comes to making sure that that September date was taken but at the same time, Jack Spilletette, while he is sort of quite clearly a bit bothered by the fact that Silksong took over sort of the hype around Hell is Us or the potential for it to skyrocket into something else entirely, he does note that it's kind of hard to just launch a game at any time in today's climate considering how stacked the release calendar is."
"He said, and I quote, that's the thing nowadays honestly, getting a window where you're pretty much alone is almost impossible, 15 years ago the mid-end of the summer was always a dead period but there's no such thing anymore, it's just constant madness.
Now that is true, December and January do remain the light months I think but apart from those, pretty much every month in the gaming calendar is going to be massively popular with September and October definitely being seen as sort of key points nowadays."
"This year as well we've seen a lot of March and April games so it just seems to be a very very popular time and unfortunately that backfired on Hell is Us.
Do you think the criticism for Hollow Knight Silksong is deserved by Hell is Us' creative director?
Do you think they should have moved the date instead?
Let me know all that and more and I'll see you tomorrow for some more TRTV news, goodbye."
