Killzone Mercenary is one of the games I have been most looking forward to in 2013 for the Vita. Everything about the game seems to fit the Vita handheld so well. The twin sticks, good graphics and dark setting of the Killzone universe is something that I feel will translate very well onto Sony's handheld. I was excited to read that the game had a solid release date, and also placed towards the beginning of the 2013 fall busy season. I was excited for the game because I thought it would be of high quality, but would also give the Vita a nice boost in sales or that quality FPS many fans have been looking for since buying the Vita. Killzone Mercenary has perhaps the worst luck in terms of release date. A day after announcing the games release date, news broke that Grand Theft Auto V had been delayed to Sept. 17, 2013, the same day as Killzone Mercenary. Talk about bad luck. The reason this is bad is due to the massive amount of attention that GTA V is going to garner from gamers. Out of all the days on the calender 2013 year, releasing the same day as GTA V has to be one of the worst times to release a game.

Guerrilla Cambridge, or anyone besides Rockstar, must of had no idea that GTA would be releasing on the same day as them. The news of both release dates brings the question of whether or not Guerrilla needs to now change their release date? Certainly releasing on a different day would help in terms of gaining attention from consumers as well as getting them to spend their money on Killzone. If at all possible my belief is that they should move that release date a couple of weeks forward to help with sales. Delaying the game may lead to it being more lost in new consoles and AAA releases. Giving the game an August release would be ideal allowing for it to come out with relatively little to compete with, and also allowing for a quality title to release in what is typically a drought in games.

Grand Theft Auto will sell a lot of copies. It will also probably have a high metacritic score and be generally well received by critics. The same can not be said for Killzone Mercenary, and quite frankly having it come out the same day as GTA does not help its chances of selling well. The biggest factor in helping the sales for Guerrilla will be having a quality game. However, now that GTA releases on the same day, the next biggest factor will be moving that release date to get out of the shadow that is GTA.

Sources:

http://www.ign.com/articles/2013/01/31/killzone-mercenary-is-a-vita...

http://www.ign.com/articles/2013/01/31/grand-theft-auto-v-gets-a-se...