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There's been much navel gazing by some of the industry's bigger publications of late: what does Sony have in store for Fall 2015? The delay of Uncharted 4: A Thief's End, a tentpole title at any time of the year, has left the PlayStation 4's slate empty; Tearaway Unfolded, Until Dawn, and Ratchet & Clank are all still in the works, but are all likely to deploy at some point in the summer. E3 could bring fresh surprises in a few months – Guerrilla has been busy beavering away on a role-playing game for what feels like an eternity now, while you'd expect Polyphony Digital to put out a new Gran Turismo at some point – but it's hard to imagine it having anything of Naughty Dog calibre ready in time for Christmas.

Media Molecule's probably the last bastion of hope in that department, but we're certainly not expecting the British developer to deliver in the "conventional" sense; whatever it's cooking would likely be better suited for a quieter period, when innovation isn't masked by the usual roster of first-person shooters and sandboxes that dominate consumers' attention at the tail-end of the year. And that brings us nicely to our point: wouldn't the platform holder be better served letting the third-parties do their business during the holidays, while its first-party fills out the slower months – and ultimately maintains interest all year round?

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Let's look at some of the big Christmas releases that Sony's dropped in recent history: Resistance 3, PlayStation All-Stars Battle Royale, Puppeteer, Beyond: Two Souls, and LittleBigPlanet 3. You can debate the quality of these titles all that you like – some were good, some not so good – but the reality remains that they were all by and large drowned out by bigger brands. Puppeteer, for example, never stood a chance against the likes of Call of Duty: Ghosts and Battlefield 4 – this is a simple fact. Would it have ever set cash registers alight? Probably not – but it would have stood a better chance in February or April, months where there's not much worth getting excited about.

Sony will be aware of this by now, of course. It's just announced that Bloodborne has exceeded one million units globally – a game that released at the end of March. inFAMOUS: Second Son enjoyed similar success the year prior, while The Last of Us smashed all kinds of sales expectations in Summer 2013. These were all critically acclaimed games with massive marketing budgets, so it's perhaps no surprise that they sold well – but would they have been anywhere near as successful going toe-to-toe with Destiny, Assassin's Creed, or Far Cry. In our opinion, no – consumers have a finite number of holiday dollars to spend, and they're going to go on the likes of Grand Theft Auto.

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It strikes us, then, that these big holiday exclusives are more a case of chest puffing than anything else. Without lingering too long on the competition, a game like Sunset Overdrive clearly would have performed much better on the Xbox One outside of the holiday rush; instead, it was picked over by Christmas shoppers, and ultimately – to our knowledge, at least – underperformed. LittleBigPlanet 3, a sequel that already belongs to a popular brand, suffered a similar fate. And to what end? They probably looked good in the list wars fought on forums, but both could have been used to pad out quieter periods in their respective system's release calendar.

And that's why, in our opinion, these holiday exclusives don't matter as much as people think. Sony seems to have cottoned on, realising that it can maintain mindshare all year by spreading the love. As far as we can tell, this Christmas is going to be all about Star Wars: Battlefront on the PS4 – and, if the rumours are true, Call of Duty: Black Ops III, too. They may be third-party games, but the Japanese giant will compensate in the New Year: Uncharted 4 will inevitably be the biggest Spring release of 2016, and it'll have all of the breathing space that it needs to truly dominate the headlines. Why share that attention with third-parties just to be part of the Christmas conversation? It doesn't make sense.

Do you think that Sony's better saving its biggest titles for a quieter period of the year, or do you want it to unleash everything in its stable at once? Talk things through in the comments section below.

Do you think the PS4 needs big holiday exclusives? (66 votes)

  1. Yes, I want something to really excite me at Christmas time33%
  2. Hmm, I don’t know and I don’t really care17%
  3. No, save the big exclusives until a quieter period of the year50%

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