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

[Mr Puggsly]

thismeintiel said:

Mr Puggsly said:

thismeintiel said:

Yea, pretty dick move.  Such poor communication coming from MS's side.  My guess is the single-player campaign was requested by MS after they saw the complaints about Titanfall.  Then, to promise a 30 hr JRPG, without even telling the dev that's what you wanted and with the dev only having a remaining $3M coming their way to develop the game?  That raises it a whole 'nother level.

You do know this is a remake of the original game, right? That had a campaign, I assume from the start the goal was to just recreate that. Actually, the developer said themselves the inital goal was a remake of the original game.

Even without a campaign Titanfall sold better than most shooters and received critical acclaim by the way.

We don't exactly know that.  EA only announced Titanfall's sales for the first month, which was only an announcement of 925K for the month of March for the US.  That suggests to me that the WW launch must have not been much higher, so maybe 1.1M-1.2M.  After that, they refused to update sales.  This, plus the fact that the online player count dropped significantly after a few months and the sequel is coming to the PS4, tells me that sales must have dropped quite a bit after the initial launch.  I kinda doubt it has sold the 2.6M that VGC has it listed at for XBO.  And it's definitely not the next COD they were hoping it to be.

So, I think MS was looking at that drop and thinking that maybe a single player campaign might not only help sales of the game among gamers who prefer single-player, but also might help its longetivity with gamers who like both SP and MP. 

Also, the game company only asked for more money after MS decided the campaign should be ~30 hrs, instead of just 6 hrs.  In other words, they were asking for only $2M-3M more for an extra ~24 hrs of gameplay/story.  Not really that bad considering MS probably throws 10x that amount on ad campaigns for Halo.

They dont bother announcing sales because people like you will just compare it to more successful shooters. Even if it did achieve what VGChartz claims people will downplay it. Frankly, I bet its well beyond 2.6 million when digital sales are added.

The fact is population has gone down in all console online shooters. The games still sell in droves but Im guessing people just spend less time playing online. Even CoD AW hides the population count because they dont want people commenting on that.

From my understanding Phantom Dust was going to be F2P. Kinda like Killer Instinct, Fable Legends, and Project Spark. Hence, selling copies shouldnt be a concern. The original Phantom Dust had a campaign and Id assume they were porting that.

I am reluctant to believe they were expected to add significantly more content without extra money. It just doesent make sense given MS knows plenty about game development. Also, the game is still in development. So I feel there is more to the story.