How a small studio's chance at big time died at Microsoft's doorstep

[thismeintiel]

Mr Puggsly said:

thismeintiel said:

Uh...maybe you missed the part where MS wanted a 6hr single-player campaign, but weren't going to give them another dime after the intial $5M.  $5M they had originally agreed to when it was going to be MP only.  Then, it was promised by a head at Xbox to be a ~30 hr campaign.  You honestly don't think asking for some more money to reach that goal is unreasonable, right?

Just because the campaign is 30 hours doesn't mean they have to pour a ton of money into it. A lot of these JRPGs can be longer than that and probably work with that budget. Those games are often considered a success after selling a few hundred thousand.

Some games have mega budgets and are only a few hours all long. Use some common sense, hours of gameplay and budget aren't equal.

Anyhow, I'm pretty sure I read it was supposed to launch as multiplayer only and have the campaign added in later. That's kinda what MS is doing with Killer Instinct. I can play as Season 2 characters, but none of them have their story yet.

Common sense dictates that if you ask a dev to do a MP game for $5M, then ask them after the fact to include a single-player campaign, then say it should be 30 hrs long, they are going to need more money.  That's A LOT of extra work/time that needs to be invested.  As well as extra money that would possibly go towards writers and voice actors.  Bottom line is this is all a result of very poor communication from MS, and there lack of want to invest more money to get more game.