Embracer is a joke. They could have just bought Nintendo stock and have a better ROI. Why did they bet it all on videogames? It’s like they haven’t looked at other publishers’ massive buying sprees of the past. Non of those were ever successful. Like EA shuttered or sold so many studios within a decade after purchase. Even Disney failed at it.
Their problem was they counted their chickens before they hatched. They went on a spending spree while expecting an influx of cash from the Saudi PIF. But the deal fell through and suddenly, they were short about $2 billion.
Vaguely related: why the hell was it so hard for me to start Borderlands 3 on my Xbox? It's like, dude, I don't need your annoying third party service. This is still a game system, not a computer, right? Just... just let me press start and start the game without signing up for some other crap.
Hardware wise, that's been pretty much the case forever (example: Atari 5200 is a consolized Atari 400 computer), but it's that simplified interface and the instant gratification that makes the distinction between the two. On a game system: insert game. Press start. Play game. On a computer? Tons and tons and tons of loading and file management and updates and passwords and downloads and accepting EULAs and Oh God now it's crashed and I have to start the damn thing all over again.
Game consoles satisfy that urgent need for "ME GAME NOW." At least, they used to. In the olden times, you could start a game in the time it takes for you to drop a quarter in the machine and press 1P. Now, it seems like game companies do everything within their power to delay that dopamine fix on consoles... which is uncomfortably close to the gaming experience on computers. "Another cut scene? Gee, great. It's not like I started this video game to play a video game."
I DESPISE their new UI. I was a fan of the assassin’s creed games longer into the series than most, but being forced to use a thumbstick for a mouse was (for some reason) the last straw
I was so frustrated with BL3 given that BL2 was basically a masterpiece.
I hope they go back to BL1/2 territory by simplifying and paring down some of the bloat.
Handsome Jack worked so well because he didn’t feel forced. And Pandora worked in 2 because it was merely an expansion of what existed in 1 without trying to go way too big like BL3.
KISS works well for many things, but especially the Borderlands franchise.
3DRealms ran out of money and Gearbox bought the rights in 2010 ahead of the 2011 release, but according to Wikipedia, several of the 3DRealms developers were brought on board as a part of that process.
I mean yeah, Take Two (2k, Rockstar) certainly has a better management track record than Embracer, and a lot of other bracer studios were just shut down, at least franchises like Borderlands and Risk of Rain might live on now.
Embracer massively fucked over a huge raft of studios. Bought them all up and then killed projects and laid off staff after not making the (entirely unrealistic) returns they expected.
Anything that means those studios are getting out from under Embracer is probably good.
More seriously, we don’t know. Only time will tell. Take-Two will definitely be looking at redundancies, so it might not be good for all employees. For the IPs, hopefully it can’t get much worse than sitting at Embracer while the company sinks like the Titanic. But Take Two has also had layoffs and shelved projects. One can only hope for the best.
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