This is the time of the year when game publishers start releasing their games, mostly to take advantage of the upcoming holiday seasons.  Games that come out in late October/early November that turn out to be really good gets added on gift lists.  For us gamers, this can be both a blessing and a curse.

Sometimes a game will be far from finished, but end up being pushed out the door upon unsuspecting customers because investors and publishers want to get the money, meanwhile the gamers who got these rushed, unfinished games are stuck with a lemon (most stores have no return policy for open PC games.)

Other times the game can turn out to be truly excellent, as was the case with Half-Life 2 when it was released in November 2004.  It sold at a brisk pace during that holiday season.  This season the games to look forward to are Dark Messiah of Might and Magic (which I preordered yesterday, and posted about here), Neverwinter Nights 2, Guild Wars:  Nightfall, World of Warcraft: Burning Crusades expansion, and a bunch more.

On top of that, there’s Nintendo’s Wii and Sony’s Playstation 3 coming out, along with a handful of console games like Gears of War and Final Fantasy XII coming out, making this a very bad month on the wallet.