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Forums - Microsoft Discussion - Project Spark Online Services Shut Down On August 12

REDZONE on 15 May 2016
walsufnir said:
REDZONE said:
I thought project spark was supposed to be the next big thing,on this site at least.

Tell us whom, when, threads and posts. This site sounds more and more that people seem to live in an alternate universe than me.

Perhaps it's my fault so please show us who and when at this site said it would be the next big thing or even hype it through the roof.

I'm not going to dig up threads or post to prove a point but it was on this site buy quite a few.Thing is I remember their names vividly.



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Teeqoz on 15 May 2016
Shadow1980 said:
Honestly, I only downloaded it because it was free and I wanted to see how its map editor worked. It's not really anything great as a game in and of itself, but some of the map creation tools I think would be great additions for map editors in other games. Halo's Forge in particular could definitely benefit from having terrain editor and texture tools, which are similar to those in the map editors in the Far Cry games but overall a bit more user-friendly.

But again we have another digital-only title and a "games as service" title being shut down and removed from sale. I'm assuming that those who already have the game can still use it to create and play their own maps, so it's not rendered completely useless, but it should serve as a reminder of the inherent drawbacks to any game that's digital only and/or is treated as a "service" instead of an actual product. Fortunately Project Spark was free.

It wasn't free from the start though.



Namiirei on 15 May 2016

It was a nice LBP killer.



d21lewis on 15 May 2016
Teeqoz said:
Shadow1980 said:
Honestly, I only downloaded it because it was free and I wanted to see how its map editor worked. It's not really anything great as a game in and of itself, but some of the map creation tools I think would be great additions for map editors in other games. Halo's Forge in particular could definitely benefit from having terrain editor and texture tools, which are similar to those in the map editors in the Far Cry games but overall a bit more user-friendly.

But again we have another digital-only title and a "games as service" title being shut down and removed from sale. I'm assuming that those who already have the game can still use it to create and play their own maps, so it's not rendered completely useless, but it should serve as a reminder of the inherent drawbacks to any game that's digital only and/or is treated as a "service" instead of an actual product. Fortunately Project Spark was free.

It wasn't free from the start though.

I'm pretty sure it was. I downloaded it when it was first released and never paid a penny for it. It did have micro transactions, though. I can look at my account data and tell you exactly which day I got it.



LudicrousSpeed on 15 May 2016

There was a free version with limited access to things and a paid version that gave you some of the premium DLC.



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SvennoJ on 15 May 2016

Project spark got a fair bit of attention by Eurogamer for example
http://www.eurogamer.net/games/project-spark

It all looked very promising in 2013

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NbgfymDAOeQ

It had potential yet the free to play model killed it. No interesting campaign and content locked behind 46 content packs.
It was hyped on vgchartz to an extent as the answer to LBP. LBP fizzled out in its own however.



Teeqoz on 15 May 2016
LudicrousSpeed said:
There was a free version with limited access to things and a paid version that gave you some of the premium DLC.

Ah okay. Thanks for clearing it up.



Robtommy34 on 16 May 2016
Slimebeast said:

Out of touch. Keyword for Microsoft game development.

What do they have left? That thing with the headphones guy commanding dragons looks cool, but will not sell anything since Platinum games are niche. Fable Legends was such a miscalculation to even greenlight it, horrible! Quantum Break flopped.

What else they got? Gears of War is obsolete. Crackdown 3 looks like shit and sales will be hurt when it's revealed that the cloud feature gimmick was a fake and doesn't help the game much. Sea of Thieves will be a flop of enormous proportions in relation to its high development cost.

What else exclusives are in the pipeline?

Xbox is in huge trouble. I'm afraid it will be deleted soon.

Moderated, Carl

Slimebeast, you know that with a few of these mods that are pro-Microsoft, you won't be able to say anything negative about the company.   That's flaming in Carl's logic if I'm not mistaken.  

- Moderated, Carl



Robtommy34 on 16 May 2016
endimion said:
The problem with MS outside of productivity software is they have great ideas and do much better than the competition in many areas, but they have a terrible way to present and implement them... Outside of surface... They could have owned the mp3 business, the tablet business the phone and the console business if they weren't so unreactive at the worst possible time...

Intelligent post.  Great ideas, poor implementation.  



Aquamarine on 16 May 2016

The reason Project Spark failed is the same reason Neverwinter Nights 2 failed.

Ultimately the editor was too complex for the layman to produce something meaningful.

Anyone who could actually create a balanced, well-thought-out, plot-rich game worthy of playing....might as well just use standalone engines like Unity and create a new, monetized game that wouldn't be destined for obscurity on a failing service.

I still have Project Spark downloaded on my computer and I've tried a lot of the "Hall of Fame" modules...they tend to be painfully mediocre at best.

No game can thrive like this. There's a reason why they didn't bother with a sequel to Neverwinter Nights 2.

As others have said, I quite enjoyed Team Dakota's standalone adventures Void Storm and Conker's Big Reunion. I really wish they would have expanded those into full-fledged, single-player games and not even bothered with the whole creation tool nonsense. It's just not worth it.

Microsoft tends to have these huge ambitions for their games, which ultimately leads to their downfall. First Quantum Break, then Fable Legends, now Project Spark.....I'm afraid Sea of Thieves is next on the chopping block, folks.