Yup, seems like the larger the company the more they gravitate to placing fewer and larger bets. After all, why be satisfied with some money when you could attempt to get ALL of the money ?
Except a lot of these bets are lost, and they do not come cheap. We’ll see about this one but it looks bound to have the same trajectory as Avengers (which had in fact a pretty decent campaign, followed by a mediocre grindy live service “endgame”).
To be fair, every studio is 2 bombs away from bankruptcy, hell MeMeMe games shut down even though they didn’t make a single bad game since shadow tactics. Both gacha and live service are constant cashflows that keep a company alive during hard times, just like Final Fantasy XIV kept Square going, and granblue is keeping Cygames going while they invest the surplus on more prestige games.
I’ve been avoiding AAA games after being burned a few too many times and it’s really opened my eyes to some great indie games. The Steam deck has been great for that also. I think it was Skill Up who said something along the lines of the issue with live service games is that they require so much of your time that you literally do not have the spare time to maintain multiple games. That means that the vast majority of them are going to be DOA.
Somewhat ridiculous characterization. Did it perform under expectations? Following worry from the Avengers flop, yeah, of course. It was still the seventh best selling game in the US at one point, which isn’t small, and did better in other countries. Hardly “nobody.”
No. It was a massive flop. well received by players and critics alike, but a massive flop. ‘Seventh best selling game in one region for five seconds’ for a game like that is really really bad.
It’s a good game. It flopped so hard it made squarenix decide to get out of the western style market entirely, selling off the entire western arm of the company for a super low price just to be done with it, It was disastrous
And yet, to say “nobody bought it” is still ridiculous. These stupid exchanges wouldn’t happen to begin with if people didn’t engage in useless hyperbole.
sure, ok. seems like that’s what you’re doing but go off, dude.
edit: As a reminder, what’s actually being discussed are non-live service games that were well received and enjoyed, and by any other metric than sales, including that recognized in your own reply, GotG qualifies. If it hadn’t been preceded by the Avengers, and associated concerns, it likely would have sold much better, and “nobody bought it” is still flat out wrong.
They wouldn’t happen either if people could stop and think for a second to understand that hyperbole isn’t literal, and that “nobody bought it” clearly means “its sales performance was well under expectations”.
The hyperbole is still dumb and unnecessary even in this context, considering stats such as debuting at #2 in the UK. It may have sold below the inflated corporate expectations, but it still sold a respectable amount.
I mean, seriously, is it really that hard to say “it didn’t sell enough”?
And also the contrast between the Avengers and the Guardians of the Galaxy games. It’s not like you don’t have things to compare to! Although I wonder whether they were too deep into development at that time? Don’t know what the lead time on this game was/is. 🤔
They were already way in development by that point. Companies do know live service isn’t the bubble they thought it would be but it’s either lose all investments or get some return in the hope they hit the mass. Where they really fucked up is with the delay. Looks like nothing has changed as has put them in the fire with the end of fiscal year 2023. It’s also coming out same day as Persona 3 Reload which will likely be a heavily praised single player game. At least last April we hadn’t hit the maelstrom of “GOTY each week”.
My best guess is that when they first started giving the earliest look at the game, they were (somehow) very surprised at the backlash to their trend-chasing formula; and then, from there, may have completely stumbled in trying to totally re-focus the game into something people would like without remaking it from scratch.
What makes it most tragic is that this is the last instance of Kevin Conroy’s Batman VA. It’s not a good close to such a legacy.
Tldr, the games director never referred to it as a live service game (even though it has all the elements of one and takes a lot from other live service games).
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