Mobile games are where the money is, at least on Korea right now or till the next Gen of consoles come out, or Korean players get bored of Mobiles games. This is not an announcement for the western market.
Mobile is raking in tons of cash in the Western Market, as well. You are being willfully ignorant.
So they are all doing it going mobile. So PC games fucked.
It'll be ok. The big corps will go off chasing the mobile game mtx money, which is what they do. But nature abhors a vacuum and there will be new developers coming in to PC. The cycle of life.
I say good riddance. If they do move on, then we will potentially get new companies with fresh ideas and fresh faces. The current crop of companies have been dominating the MMORPG market for decades and look how quality and innovation have fared under their watch. We could use some new sheriffs in town.
You mean like those companies that are basically putting a reskin on EverQuest or DAoC and calling it new and innovative?
The reason why this hasn't happened, despite us being in the midst of the "Age of Kickstarter," and getting more MMORPG releases than ever is because those "new companies" have nothing new or innovative to offer. All they have is hype and the exploitation of fuzzy memories due to nostalgia - then they realize they can no longer monetize via a subscription and go F2P, which is a slippery slope to P2W (especially in Asian MMORPGs... this ALMOST ALWAYS happens).
We've already tried what you're talking about. It doesn't work, because the new companies don't have the funding or developer power to being AAA-quality games to the market in a decent timespan. Do you have a huge bank account to throw money at every kickstarter that claim to have the answer you're looking for?
You are acting like we haven't been completely inundated with MMORPGs from smaller companies, which is kind of ridiculous.
We get new MMORPGs all the damn time. And we have the same complaints about all of them...
And they aren't coming from "the current crop of companies" that have been dominating the MMORPG market." Those companies are looking beyond MMORPGs, and beyond the PC platform. Blizzard, DBG, NCSoft, etc.
MMORPGs' general reliance on the PC Platform is actually one of the worst things about them. There's a reason why MMORPGs that go console end up doing VERY well there. I'm not even sure Bethesda would have been able to keep TESO running if not for the console launch (and even they are going mobile with ES: Blades).
People have been saying what you're saying for like 6 years. What you're wishing for has actually been happening for about the same span of time. We're still in the same position we were back then, except players are even more disenchanted or exasperated with the status quo.
Very disappointing for the western market, but if you look at their past financial reports, mobile is always at the top. Lol Blade and Soul 2's gameplay looked like it was performing way better than Blade and Soul.
They won't get any more money from me. Not after what happened to City of Heroes and Wildstar.
CoH at least broke even with development costs, and made money, but far from the ideal, but WS never made money for NC, even 4 years after launch, it hasn't paid the development costs.
You can't just keep running a game that didn't pay your investment back even after 4 years of operation.
I would consider playing Marvel Heroes on a mobile device such as an Android tablet with mouse and keyboard & hdmi'd to a flatscreen or monitor.
"We all do the best we can based on life experience, point of view, and our ability to believe in ourselves." - Naropa "We don't see things as they are, we see them as we are." SR Covey
this is a smart move from them. society is becoming ever more fast pace and technology keeps on improving who needs a pc if you can play it on a phone at any given time. in just a few years from now your phone would have surpassed most the the pc of yesteryear anyway.
They won't get any more money from me. Not after what happened to City of Heroes and Wildstar.
CoH at least broke even with development costs, and made money, but far from the ideal, but WS never made money for NC, even 4 years after launch, it hasn't paid the development costs.
You can't just keep running a game that didn't pay your investment back even after 4 years of operation.
These people have literally no sense of economics. It isn't even worth responding to those types of comments anymore. They think money grows on trees and Corporations (i.e. actual people who do this for a living) exist to slave away for the sake of their entertainment.
Though you sorta gotta understand the mobile push. The devices are getting incredibly powerful. The latest announced iPad Pro is as powerful as Xbox One and in some benchmark tops out the 2018 15" MacBook Pro ... which rocks a solid i7 CPU. And the iPad beats that.
And with the Metal graphics API, developers can squeeze every last bit of performance out of those devices.
The SoCs are so powerful that Apple is about to release an Apple-CPU laptops starting next year. Apple-CPU is basically their ARM SoC.
Agree. In some tests the new A12X is as fast as an 8th gen i7 - somewhat selective but still. And M.2 NVMe's were designed to fit into tablets - so they can huge storage as well.
Now consider that Samsung have just shown off their (long awaited) foldable "phone". It can't be that big a jump to envisage a foldable tablet. A foldable 10" tablet would be a decent size opened out.
At the other end of the scale you have TVs. Today they are tethered to consoles or PCs (or potentially mobiles). That may not be the case going forward; you don't need a "streaming box" these days for example - although obviously "non-smart" TVs require e.g. Firesticks or whatever.
Personally not a huge fan of mobile games because they tend to be inferior, but with the hardware gap shrinking I have no issue with great PC caliber games built for mobile, the reality is the future should have the platforms converging.
While NCSoft does have a presence outside of their home market, its only represents a very small percentage of their revenue, concentrating on the home market which is very mobile friendly, probably makes sense, that this will likely continue to marginalise revenue from outside their home market probably matters far less. All it means though, is that if NCSoft is doubling down on their mobile games, is that they are in effect withdrawing from the western market and concentrating on their home market. The western market is not becoming more mobile friendly, the types of games that make money on mobile games in the west is not the same as the ones in Korea etc. The demographics could not be more different, PC gaming is still huge, its roughly the same if not slightly more than that of the consoles combined when it comes to overall revenue generated. When it comes to MMO's and Single player RPG's etc. the future of gaming is not Mobile, at least here in the West, when it comes to the Asian market the criteria is just too different, i do think however that the Asian market will eventually 'mature' and i mean that in an economical and technological sense more than anything, which would likely encourage the Asian market to become more like the Western market, rather than the reverse, so while the Asian market might be more mobile friendly at the moment, i don't see that being the case for all that much longer.
I just had a thought, what if all the big studios jumping ship to mobile results in smaller studios and maybe some of the not so small studios focusing on what PC gamers really want. I mean if the big studios view PC gaming as crumbs compared to the mobile $teak someone has to be hungry to sweep in and pick up those crumbs , right? Could this result in a deeper and richer experience for PC gamers ?
Maybe the trash will take itself out ?
As long as pc gamers show their support for the smaller studios then sure. It’s expensive to create games so to expect a small indie studio to produce AAA quality graphics and gameplay is a huge stretch. However it is completely feasible for a few devs/artists to create a fantastic Mmo even if they have the financial support to keep moving forward.
Ninja Theory has already proven a small dev team can create a game with AAA graphics/game play with a smaller team and budget. Given the time and funding a smaller studio could do the same for an mmo.
I'm not an IT Specialist, Game Developer, or Clairvoyant in real life, but like others on here, I play one on the internet.
Comments
Smartphones are the new Game Boys.
The reason why this hasn't happened, despite us being in the midst of the "Age of Kickstarter," and getting more MMORPG releases than ever is because those "new companies" have nothing new or innovative to offer. All they have is hype and the exploitation of fuzzy memories due to nostalgia - then they realize they can no longer monetize via a subscription and go F2P, which is a slippery slope to P2W (especially in Asian MMORPGs... this ALMOST ALWAYS happens).
We've already tried what you're talking about. It doesn't work, because the new companies don't have the funding or developer power to being AAA-quality games to the market in a decent timespan. Do you have a huge bank account to throw money at every kickstarter that claim to have the answer you're looking for?
You are acting like we haven't been completely inundated with MMORPGs from smaller companies, which is kind of ridiculous.
We get new MMORPGs all the damn time. And we have the same complaints about all of them...
And they aren't coming from "the current crop of companies" that have been dominating the MMORPG market." Those companies are looking beyond MMORPGs, and beyond the PC platform. Blizzard, DBG, NCSoft, etc.
MMORPGs' general reliance on the PC Platform is actually one of the worst things about them. There's a reason why MMORPGs that go console end up doing VERY well there. I'm not even sure Bethesda would have been able to keep TESO running if not for the console launch (and even they are going mobile with ES: Blades).
People have been saying what you're saying for like 6 years. What you're wishing for has actually been happening for about the same span of time. We're still in the same position we were back then, except players are even more disenchanted or exasperated with the status quo.
You can't just keep running a game that didn't pay your investment back even after 4 years of operation.
"We all do the best we can based on life experience, point of view, and our ability to believe in ourselves." - Naropa "We don't see things as they are, we see them as we are." SR Covey
Now consider that Samsung have just shown off their (long awaited) foldable "phone". It can't be that big a jump to envisage a foldable tablet. A foldable 10" tablet would be a decent size opened out.
At the other end of the scale you have TVs. Today they are tethered to consoles or PCs (or potentially mobiles). That may not be the case going forward; you don't need a "streaming box" these days for example - although obviously "non-smart" TVs require e.g. Firesticks or whatever.
The western market is not becoming more mobile friendly, the types of games that make money on mobile games in the west is not the same as the ones in Korea etc. The demographics could not be more different, PC gaming is still huge, its roughly the same if not slightly more than that of the consoles combined when it comes to overall revenue generated.
When it comes to MMO's and Single player RPG's etc. the future of gaming is not Mobile, at least here in the West, when it comes to the Asian market the criteria is just too different, i do think however that the Asian market will eventually 'mature' and i mean that in an economical and technological sense more than anything, which would likely encourage the Asian market to become more like the Western market, rather than the reverse, so while the Asian market might be more mobile friendly at the moment, i don't see that being the case for all that much longer.
I'm not an IT Specialist, Game Developer, or Clairvoyant in real life, but like others on here, I play one on the internet.
I'm not an IT Specialist, Game Developer, or Clairvoyant in real life, but like others on here, I play one on the internet.