The thing is, some of the Indie devs closing are really independent. In other words, we can blame Take 2 here, but who can we blame other than the consumers when a fully independent dev shuts down because their games aren't selling? There is an answer to that question, it just isn't greedy publishers, even if they are the most fun to blame.
There is fault to go around. Some of it is on consumers for sure. We whine constantly about live service games, but then we play them anyway and ignore better smaller titles.
But publishers and platform holders bear some responsibility too. You hear stories come out from indie devs who had big hits in the late PS3/360 to early PS4/XONE window who can barely move units now, and some of that is definitely failure to advertise and poor discoverability. During that era I felt ...
@Nyxus
You may want to look at the release date for that physical version...
Nice edit lol.
That's a great point about BG3. It hasn't even gotten 5% of the flak AW2 has for being digital only. The one distinction I will make is that AW2 isn't available on Steam. There are plenty of people who don't want to use other digital storefronts who will use Steam.
@toxic-inferno
Sure, it's every person's choice what they want to spend their money on. No one challenges that. But if you make a big stand about how you won't buy a game unless you can buy it on a disc, and encourage other people to take the same stand, but then turn around and buy other games digitally that aren't available on disc, you are a hypocrite.
Have a good day!
@SickSinceSix
The point is, if there is a rumor that something bad happened, and then people start freaking out and saying that something far worse and more extreme happened, the fact that only the initially rumored bad event actually happened does not mean that the rumors were false.
Think of it this way. A few reporters start tweeting that around $5 million was stolen from a major bank. Then a bunch of random people on social media start freaking out an...
Yeah it's crazy they are all celebrating the rumors being a "nothing burger" when in fact the rumors from reputable sources were basically proven to be correct.
It's like someone told them the earth is going to explode in about 3000 years, and they all started freaking out that the world is going to end in the next year. Then scientists came out and confirmed the explosion is going to happen 2987 years from now, and they all laugh and say the rumors were f...
Ehh, we know now that most people buying Xboxs are buying these. Honestly I think the magic number is $199 though, psychologically.
If it wasn't exactly what you have to expect from this crowd, I'd say it's astounding that people are taking a straightforward confirmation of the rumors of Xbox releasing a few games on other platforms as a refutation of those rumors.
This is such a baffling take. The solid rumors from reliable sources were basically confirmed. A few games like Hi-Fi Rush coming to other platforms. The doomsday scenario Xbox "influencers" were afraid of where MS was going to become the new Sega never had anything behind it.
If someone tells you that several houses on your street were burglarized and then you turn around and start telling people, based on that, that the entire neighborhood was destroyed in a fi...
Okay, but everyone taking this attitude NEEDS to actually buy the game if/when they do a physical run of it. If you sit here and chirp chirp chirp about wanting a disc, and then they eventually release one and everyone who asked for it says "meh, mid, I'll wait for sale," they are going to take that as evidence that they were right to not bother initially.
I mean, maybe. I won't speak too much to Sea of Thieves because I'm a mile outside of the target audience, but I have heard that there are a lot of people who like it, and it does solid Steam concurrents for a game of its age (and we can extrapolate from steam that there are decent numbers playing on Xbox and Gamepass PC, even though we can't see those numbers).
I'm just not sure how much commercial appeal Hi-Fi Rush has though. I know plenty of people check...
Lol this reminds me of the defenders of Back 4 Blood trying to explain why Left 4 Dead 2 always has a much higher player count. They can't just admit that the newer game is way worse, it has to be "the old game is cheaper and has lower system requirements." Nevermind that this reasoning would fall apart if you tried to apply to other situations.
Hopefully they have navigated the NIL situation properly and there aren't going to be a bunch of teams or players missing. Unfortunately I fear that in the current landscape of NIL, certain schools or players may see this game as an opportunity for them to hold out and get a ton of extra money. Since the game would lose much of its appeal if it doesn't offer virtually all schools and players, you wouldn't even need to be a huge star/school to feel like you had leverage. Moreover, ...
Yeah it's a strange risk reward calculus. Obviously the potential reward of creating a sustainable live service multiplayer game is almost unlimited - if you get the playerbase established enough to sustain the game for years, you will also inevitably get your whales who buy every battlepass and skin, as well as non-whales who buy things here and there. So for years after the development costs have already been recouped, you have an ongoing revenue stream for minimal costs on your end. So...
Popular single player RPGs on steam tend to maintain a pretty solid player base, even years after launch. Get on Steam Charts or SteamDB and look up the active numbers for Fallout 4, Skyrim, or Cyberpunk 2077.
Because we can see the numbers and compare them to other games through services like Steam charts and SteamDB. People are always going to talk about the platform where we can actually see the numbers.
We really need to reassess what constitutes a "broken" game. If a game has a few hours of server issues on its launch day, that's certainly undesirable, but does that really mean it's a "broken" game forever? Because basically every multiplayer game has had server issues at some point, whether at launch or later. So are they all broken games? Is every multiplayer game on PSN or Xbox Live broken because those services have gone down before?
Time, Dr. Freeman.
"I feel like there's a trend of well made games like this going largely ignored by the gaming audience."
Yep. I'd love to know how many of us actually bought this game, rather than just getting it on Gamepass or PS Plus. Probably a shockingly low number. Steam concurrents topped out at 419.
I know it's anecdotal, but when I think of my favorite indie games, I still largely think of titles that came out in the 2009-2015 range. Maybe w...