Why are we stuck with games being released on a Friday?

November 25th, 2012, 22:41 Posted By: wraggster

<section style="font: 14px/18px Proxima, sans-serif; text-align: left; color: rgb(51, 51, 51); text-transform: none; text-indent: 0px; letter-spacing: normal; word-spacing: 0px; display: block; white-space: normal; orphans: 2; widows: 2; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px;" class="introduction ">For as long as most folk remember, games have launched on Fridays in the UK and on Tuesday in the US. That's the way of things. Sometimes they converge for a glitzy worldwide launch but mostly they don't - they stick to the norm, and Europeans wait.
But why? Who decided on Friday, and who decided on Tuesday? If some games can be released on a Tuesday worldwide why can't all games be? More pertinently, why do we stick to the same rules for downloadable games? If everyone can buy and pre-install a game on Steam at the same time, why can't they play at the same time - why must someone in the UK wait until Friday but someone in the US can play from Tuesday?
Where do all these rules come from and, more to the point, can they be changed?
</section><section style="font: 14px/18px Proxima, sans-serif; text-align: left; color: rgb(51, 51, 51); text-transform: none; text-indent: 0px; letter-spacing: normal; word-spacing: 0px; display: block; white-space: normal; orphans: 2; widows: 2; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px;">[h=2]How UK Fridays began[/h]
In the olden golden days of home computers, there was chaos. Games came from everywhere in the '80s and shops flung them on shelves whenever they turned up. "It was just release whenever you could," recalls Andy Payne, a veteran of the UK industry. "Stuff would release every single day." Even the bigger shop-chains in the 8-bit and 16-bit eras joined the scrum, buying stock from wholesalers, amassing it at warehouses then racing it out to stores to go on shelves "as quickly as you bloody could".
That's what Graeme Struthers tells me, and he should know: he was a games buyer for Dixons Stores Group (Currys, Dixons, PCWorld) at the time. "And we were by far the biggest retailer for 16-bit," he - wait, was he boasting?
Big operators like Dixons weren't happy. They had order for other goods in their stores and they advertised them in newspapers on Fridays and Saturdays. The prospect of stock turning up late and missing the weekend wasn't a good one, so the big shops did something about it.
"Dixons basically started sitting down with the supply chain and saying, 'If you release products on a Friday that means we can include it in our advertising; that means we can promote you.' It's carrot and stick," Graeme Struthers explains. "I wouldn't say that Dixons were the company that made it Fridays, but it was the retail chains that said having product just turning up ad hoc is useless; having product that's got a defined release date means we can all orientate our distribution to get it into all of our shops for a Friday so that we've got the weekend business.
"It was basically retail bringing order to a very chaotic supply chain. Within about six to eight months, everyone was selling things on a Friday. It was very quick to reach that agreement and understanding."

"It was basically retail bringing order to a very chaotic supply chain. Within about six to eight months, everyone was selling things on a Friday.
Graeme Struthers

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