Comment on EXCLUSIVE - Year 2 Content is Planned for Ubisoft's Skull and Bones
ampersandrew@lemmy.world 1 day agoYou’re inferring a whole lot from a mock-up of gameplay that isn’t actually gameplay. A single player Naughty Dog game has a huge leg up over Concord in that you can play it regardless of how many other people bought it. Just saying “from the makers of The Last of Us” buys a few million copies sold where Concord didn’t clear 50k. If you want actual candidates for the next Concord, it’s going to be Marathon and, even more likely, Fairgame$.
RightHandOfIkaros@lemmy.world 1 day ago
I definitely remember the Concord developers bragging about having worked on games like Destiny. Regardless, I think you are underestimating how expensive Intergalactic is going to be, and I absolutely think that it will not be breaking even on sales, unless they significantly change the fundamental design of the game they have shown (and the leaked plot honestly, it is not very good if that is real).
Marathon and Fairgame$ are absolutely going next, but I don’t see them releasing before Intergalactic, despite being developed for much longer, probably. I think both are probably being delayed even more than they already are after seeing what happened to Concord.
ampersandrew@lemmy.world 1 day ago
I’m not underestimating how much Naughty Dog spends on their games. That stuff all leaked, so we can put an exact number on Last of Us 2. People dig the games that they make though.
Concord selling themselves as having developers who worked on Destiny reminds me of a trend I’ve observed though, though maybe there are outliers that have slipped through the cracks that would prove me wrong. When a new studio pitches its inaugural game as being from developers of X, Y, or Z, it pretty much never goes well, especially if it’s aiming for AAA. Maybe there are difficulties building a game and scaling up to that team size simultaneously. Any of a number of things can be the case, but at this point, it’s a red flag for me. The difference between that and “from the makers of The Last of Us” is that Naughty Dog is still Naughty Dog, and that’s more or less the same band sticking together. The Last of Us didn’t do it for me, and neither did Uncharted 4 honestly, but their games keep seeing the same levels of acclaim and success release after release.
RightHandOfIkaros@lemmy.world 1 day ago
Im thinking more on licensing costs. Porsche is not a cheap license, especially when considering costs for the details of such a license. The other logos seemed to be Sony owned IP, so they didn’t cost anything, but just seeing Porsche makes me wonder how many other licenses they are paying for, thus ballooning development cost. They may have a license with Porsche for Gran Turismo, but that would not be applicable to other games, so they would have to renegotiate the license, which is always inviting the licensor to demand more the next time.
I don’t doubt it will sell more copies than Concord, but I do believe it will not sell enough to be profitable, and in this way be similar to Concord. The Youtube dislike ratio on the reveal trailer for Intergalactic (91k up, 225k down) is more or less the same as for Concord (8.5k up, 84.5k down) at overwhelmingly negative, and historically speaking this is not an insignificant statistic. Other games I might expect to have similar ratios for various reasons do not have overwhelmingly negative reception, such as the female lead game The Witcher 4 (5k up, 1k down on PlayStation channel - 251k up, 24.7k down on The Witcher channel), anime racing game Screamer (2k up, 75 down), and even The Last of Us Part 2 Remaster (7.2k up, 6.6k down) which I for sure expected to be negative.
I certainly agree with the trend you are seeing. I remember when this happened when ReCore was promoted as “from the developers of Metroid Prime.” ReCore wasn’t awful, but it was far from Metroid Prime. I also didn’t like Naughty Dogs previous titles, but I do think this will be a hard sell. Space themed games typically don’t sell as well as modern or medieval themed games (unfortunately, since I really love space!). I guess the audience for them is not as big, or rather it is big but divided into many niche categories that don’t really like mixing. Star Citizen, Starfield, and StarCraft don’t have a huge overlap of players despite being space themed games. That’s just how space stuff is. Star Wars and Star Trek don’t mix, and while some people are interested in both, most people pick one or the other and stay there forever. I mean look at Star Wars Outlaws, which seems to be in a similar vein to Intergalactic. Sold horribly, despite having the leg up on Intergalactic of being a Star Wars title.
I suppose we will see how it turns out. Personally, I don’t hope the game fails, but I do think Naughty Dog needs to make some big changes to get me and others interested in trying the game again.
ampersandrew@lemmy.world 1 day ago
I’m expecting the licenses resulted in the money flowing in the other direction. Monster paid Kojima for Death Stranding, not the other way around.
Dislike ratios are fake these days, as it just polls people who use the browser extension. Don’t put too much stock into it. Some segment of people get told that the game is woke because it stars a woman who shaves her head in the opening seconds, so they brigade the video and mash dislike.