While I am not a huge Blizzard fan, they did make the right move to cancel as opposed to cash grabbing and shooting themselves in the foot like Destiny.
wait .. making $325M revenue in a week is shooting themselves in the foot?
(note that i am not arguing Destiny is a good game, and i have yet to play it ... but i am saying if 325M is shooting themselves in the foot, many companies would love to shoot themselves).
Having a game so hyped like Destiny with a mega budget with players expecting the level of game that was HALO is in fact shooting themselves in the foot... Yes they made a shit ton of money however they also made most of the entire playerbase leary. It's like seeing a moving trailer and then going to the movies only to find out the best parts were in the trailer.
A decent example is Diablo 3... Wildly successful at release, much more successful than it needed to be, however the game play and controversy surrounding the auction house etc turned a lot of players off... So much so that a lot less players ended up buying the expansion where the gameplay at that point was far superior than when the game released. A better launch experience would have meant a much higher retention rate and more expansion sales meaning more success. However form a CORPORATE standpoint they shot themselves in the foot by costing themselves much more sales.
Wildstar is another good example, look at the retention rate on that game. That has already been discussed ad nauseam but still a good example.
Makling $325 million in one shot only to piss off your market is not good long term and sustainable business sense. Companies don't do business to "win the lottery" then die out... so yes... they did shoot themselves in the foot... At least from the buzz and reviews coming in. Hell I could be wrong... The proof however will be in how the DLC and expansions perform.
Since its initial release in 2012, Diablo 3 - combined with its recent Reaper of Souls expansion - has sold more than 20 million copies worldwide across all platforms, Activision revealed during a financial report today.
Base on that, only 1/3 rd of the people who bought diablo 3 bother to buy the expansion.
That being said, I'm not sure if more copies have been sold later.
Well, RoS is also the best selling PC game in the quarter. We will find out how many more copies sold in the next quarterly report.
Note that there is no ROS console version ... and the ultimate evil edition includes RoS.
well diablo 3 didn't actually sell that many console copies.
I hope Blizzard will seperate ROS and diablo 3 numbers, so people'll know how many people actually bother to buy the expansion.
It's funny how the OP and others are squarely blaming players for the failure of various games. People will buy a game due to hype, but they will continue to play it if it is enjoyable to do so. Most of the games that have failed to retain the expected amount of subs did so because of both of the above reasons: because the game was not as good as the hype, and because it wasn't fun to play for more than a few weeks/months.
well diablo 3 didn't actually sell that many console copies.
I hope Blizzard will seperate ROS and diablo 3 numbers, so people'll know how many people actually bother to buy the expansion.
They did say 2.7M copies of RoS in the first week ... but after that, we only know it is the best selling PC game in the quarter. Do we know how much the second best selling PC games sold? That would give a lower bound.
With Hearthstone and the upcoming Heroes of the Storm, I think Blizzard realized they could be a lot more profitable by making smaller, high quality games with limited budgets and small dev teams. There's no point in putting all your eggs in one basket by making some giant blockbuster MMO which is likely to fail like all previous entries since the original WoW. Even Diablo 3 probably ended up being a little too big for Blizzard's britches, especially after the fiasco surrounding the RMAH and having to be constantly online. They dodged a bullet by fixing most of these issues with RoS, but I have a feeling it put the fear of God in them from that point on.
As for how this will affect the MMORPG genre, I think what we're seeing is the collapse of the concept of the genre itself. I think Blizzard, and hopefully other big studios now realize that that the MMORPG genre is basically an unholy hybrid, and that the individual components need to be kept separated in individual games now that the technology has improved to such an extent. The original, successful MMORPGs like EQ and WoW were able to get away with it because they came along at the right time and captured lightning in a bottle so to speak. Nowadays you can't create a game that's a jack of all trades, instead you need to focus like a laser on one specific thing. For example, if you want a deeper, RPG-based, solo-leveling experience, you've got games like Skyrim. You want an action packed hack-n-slash? Play God of War. Do you want to have the freedom of an open world sandbox game? Play GTA5. Raiding? You've got some very high quality MOBAs out there, and on and on and on.
Prediction: For the next few years, Blizzard's going to make a lot of smaller games that incorporate the individual concepts that were going to be used in Titan. The one area where we might see a new IP and something completely new from them will be some kind of open-world sandbox type game, that's similar to the Sims, but with Blizzard's trademark spin on the genre. However, it definitely WON'T be an mmorpg.
With Hearthstone and the upcoming Heroes of the Storm, I think Blizzard realized they could be a lot more profitable by making smaller, high quality games with limited budgets and small dev teams. There's no point in putting all your eggs in one basket by making some giant blockbuster MMO which is likely to fail like all previous entries since the original WoW. Even Diablo 3 probably ended up being a little too big for Blizzard's britches, especially after the fiasco surrounding the RMAH and having to be constantly online. They dodged a bullet by fixing most of these issues with RoS, but I have a feeling it put the fear of God in them from that point on.
As for how this will affect the MMORPG genre, I think what we're seeing is the collapse of the concept of the genre itself. I think Blizzard, and hopefully other big studios now realize that that the MMORPG genre is basically an unholy hybrid, and that the individual components need to be kept separated in individual games now that the technology has improved to such an extent. The original, successful MMORPGs like EQ and WoW were able to get away with it because they came along at the right time and captured lightning in a bottle so to speak. Nowadays you can't create a game that's a jack of all trades, instead you need to focus like a laser on one specific thing. For example, if you want a deeper, RPG-based, solo-leveling experience, you've got games like Skyrim. You want an action packed hack-n-slash? Play God of War. Do you want to have the freedom of an open world sandbox game? Play GTA5. Raiding? You've got some very high quality MOBAs out there, and on and on and on.
Prediction: For the next few years, Blizzard's going to make a lot of smaller games that incorporate the individual concepts that were going to be used in Titan. The one area where we might see a new IP and something completely new from them will be some kind of open-world sandbox type game, that's similar to the Sims, but with Blizzard's trademark spin on the genre. However, it definitely WON'T be an mmorpg.
I agreed.
The biggest issue of D3 is the inclusion of MMO type features (particularly the AH, not just the RMAH). If they do another in the future, I am sure it will be a focused dungeon hack-n-slash (not different than a MMO dungeon run) but don't go into all the other stuff.
Focused games are also more convenient. If i want to pvp, just go into a MOBA or planetside 2 (pvp game) and don't have to deal with pve quests, or crafting, or other stuff. Likewise if I want to be doing hack-n-slash dungeons, i don't need the pvp stuff.
Comments
Having a game so hyped like Destiny with a mega budget with players expecting the level of game that was HALO is in fact shooting themselves in the foot... Yes they made a shit ton of money however they also made most of the entire playerbase leary. It's like seeing a moving trailer and then going to the movies only to find out the best parts were in the trailer.
A decent example is Diablo 3... Wildly successful at release, much more successful than it needed to be, however the game play and controversy surrounding the auction house etc turned a lot of players off... So much so that a lot less players ended up buying the expansion where the gameplay at that point was far superior than when the game released. A better launch experience would have meant a much higher retention rate and more expansion sales meaning more success. However form a CORPORATE standpoint they shot themselves in the foot by costing themselves much more sales.
Wildstar is another good example, look at the retention rate on that game. That has already been discussed ad nauseam but still a good example.
Makling $325 million in one shot only to piss off your market is not good long term and sustainable business sense. Companies don't do business to "win the lottery" then die out... so yes... they did shoot themselves in the foot... At least from the buzz and reviews coming in. Hell I could be wrong... The proof however will be in how the DLC and expansions perform.
What are your other Hobbies?
Gaming is Dirt Cheap compared to this...
well diablo 3 didn't actually sell that many console copies.
I hope Blizzard will seperate ROS and diablo 3 numbers, so people'll know how many people actually bother to buy the expansion.
It's funny how the OP and others are squarely blaming players for the failure of various games. People will buy a game due to hype, but they will continue to play it if it is enjoyable to do so. Most of the games that have failed to retain the expected amount of subs did so because of both of the above reasons: because the game was not as good as the hype, and because it wasn't fun to play for more than a few weeks/months.
They did say 2.7M copies of RoS in the first week ... but after that, we only know it is the best selling PC game in the quarter. Do we know how much the second best selling PC games sold? That would give a lower bound.
With Hearthstone and the upcoming Heroes of the Storm, I think Blizzard realized they could be a lot more profitable by making smaller, high quality games with limited budgets and small dev teams. There's no point in putting all your eggs in one basket by making some giant blockbuster MMO which is likely to fail like all previous entries since the original WoW. Even Diablo 3 probably ended up being a little too big for Blizzard's britches, especially after the fiasco surrounding the RMAH and having to be constantly online. They dodged a bullet by fixing most of these issues with RoS, but I have a feeling it put the fear of God in them from that point on.
As for how this will affect the MMORPG genre, I think what we're seeing is the collapse of the concept of the genre itself. I think Blizzard, and hopefully other big studios now realize that that the MMORPG genre is basically an unholy hybrid, and that the individual components need to be kept separated in individual games now that the technology has improved to such an extent. The original, successful MMORPGs like EQ and WoW were able to get away with it because they came along at the right time and captured lightning in a bottle so to speak. Nowadays you can't create a game that's a jack of all trades, instead you need to focus like a laser on one specific thing. For example, if you want a deeper, RPG-based, solo-leveling experience, you've got games like Skyrim. You want an action packed hack-n-slash? Play God of War. Do you want to have the freedom of an open world sandbox game? Play GTA5. Raiding? You've got some very high quality MOBAs out there, and on and on and on.
Prediction: For the next few years, Blizzard's going to make a lot of smaller games that incorporate the individual concepts that were going to be used in Titan. The one area where we might see a new IP and something completely new from them will be some kind of open-world sandbox type game, that's similar to the Sims, but with Blizzard's trademark spin on the genre. However, it definitely WON'T be an mmorpg.
I agreed.
The biggest issue of D3 is the inclusion of MMO type features (particularly the AH, not just the RMAH). If they do another in the future, I am sure it will be a focused dungeon hack-n-slash (not different than a MMO dungeon run) but don't go into all the other stuff.
Focused games are also more convenient. If i want to pvp, just go into a MOBA or planetside 2 (pvp game) and don't have to deal with pve quests, or crafting, or other stuff. Likewise if I want to be doing hack-n-slash dungeons, i don't need the pvp stuff.