The life and death of midnight game releases

destructoid.com:

It’s 2009, and I go to my first-ever midnight launch for a game. Infamous was the next big exclusive game for the PS3, and I was incredibly excited. I was in my final weeks of high school, in the middle of exam season in the UK. I took the game home, unwrapped it, and played all night until around 7 am. I had an exam the following day, but I didn’t care. I just had to play that game.

Fast forward to 2023, and I couldn’t tell you what exam I was supposed to be studying for. I couldn’t tell you whether I passed it or failed it, and it doesn’t matter. The memory of lining up for the midnight launch of Infamous and playing it all night will stay with me forever. The next few weeks, while I should have been studying for other exams, I was instead playing Infamous. That summer of playing Infamous is one of my fondest gaming memories.

Over the next few years, I went to midnight launches for nearly everything. Modern Warfare 2, the Nintendo 3DS, the PlayStation Vita, and countless other games. Despite moving countries several times over the years, I still have many of those physical games that I lined up for.

Each one of these releases is a memory on my shelf of games.

There was a time when a midnight launch for even a medium-sized video game was a given. I missed out on some of the biggest-ever launch events, like Halo 3, but the ones I did go to are seared in my brain.

I don’t know when exactly midnight launches stopped happening. If I remember correctly, the last one I attended was probably for Pokémon X & Y. Then I moved to Korea for a few years, and when I got back, it was like midnight launches had never existed at all.

I’m sure the lack of midnight launches for games these days has something to do with the rise of digital