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

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.



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Last edited by OttoniBastos - on 20 February 2023

OttoniBastos said:
Mr Puggsly said:
OttoniBastos said:
This western industry man....

I mean,we huge budget for rehashed,underwhelming games with lack of features that make us wonder "where the hell the money went?" and then a game like this that was supose to be a gift for fans is cheaped out like this.....

I'm not saying they should just burn money on a niche game,but damn at least give enough to actually make the project "doable".


If the studio thought they could do it for 5 million then it should haven been done for that amount. Changing their tune and asking for 7 to 8 million is crazy.

5 million for a multiplayer only game with,based in this article,not top notch graphics.

then microsoft added a 6 hours single player campaign(that after became 30 hours promise) with CGI presentation that was too far from what devs were able to do it.

enforcing new features without raising the already low budget was not a good move.

Hell i'm sure that the #huntthetruth campaing alone was more expensive that the couple of millions that devs asked to be added.

Quite honestly, I don't think I believe it. MS aren't some amateurs in the gaming business. Making significantly more content with no extra money doesn't make a lot of sense.

We're just hearing one side of a story. Also, if MS doesn't want to spend money why is the game being moved to another studio? Lets remember the game hasn't been cancelled.

Here's the thing, MS has published many games and worked with many studio. Something really went wrong with this one, there must be more to the story.

No point in bringing Halo into this. That has been a massive success for MS.



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TBH MS made a mistake by giving this project to an unknown studio they should have just given the project to Yukio Futatsugi's (the original creator of the game) studio Grounding Inc. I'm pretty sure that they could made the game with that budget and make a better product than Darkside Studios.
I'm glad that they canned Darksides version of the game because the alpha footage looked bad like if they just ported the original game and updated the graphics a little.



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.



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bunchanumbers said:
It was a smart move. MS is wise to make sure a game is on budget and on schedule. Sony would be wise to do stuff like this too. They wasted millions on projects that took far too long to happen and in some cases never happened. If MS was running the show I'm betting that TLG would have been canceled long ago.

As would Journey, which was also way over budget and over deadline.  I'll stick with Sony's methods.  Of course, they've also canceled some big projects, so it's hardly a "one size fits all" situation.

As for the OP, without knowing the details and progress of the work, I have no idea how anyone can decide that it was a good or bad move.  It could have been a decision based on money, on quality, or a combination of those two factors.



sad the game has gone the way it has, hopefully the game doesn't fall into limbo status, feel bad for Darkside the tone of the article put MS in a bad light, I do find it odd that MS ask them to put in a single-player component and not give them any additional funds, which seems more ridiculous as if MS has given the project to another studio that's more money they have to spend or the other studio is even on a more tighter budget than Darkside and if they stared where Darkside left off.

If all said is true an extra 1-2 million doesn't seem like an enormous amount(like i handle that kinda money lol) exclusive usually get a boost just for being "exclusive" I'm sure with advertising something MS is really good ay the game could sold well enough to earn the 8 mil back...like 200k which should be doable(has an exclusive sold less than that?)



Wait so we are believing the word of a bunch of angry people that just got fired, that use to work for an unprovened studio that might have had zero talent and be hugely overestimated by MS. And we are to believe MS moved the project after 2million sunk and will lose some money in the process just because they say he said blabla....

I feel more a bunch of butt hurt people that weren't capable to do what they were asked periods.... This isn't a charity, it's business either you deliver in the terms of the customer or just get the fuck out period...

I remember a console maker that had a futuristic vision of the gaming market which was years ahead of the competition with their concept and had a major backlash in sales... I don't see all the whiners and finger pointers complaining about the archaic and has been state of mind of the competition customer choices...



Game looked terrible. I can see why it was cancelled.

That said it, it looked terrible before E3 yet MS used it at E3 as a "big announcement". If it was so terrible why do that.



psn- tokila

add me, the more the merrier.

after reading the article its pretty clear microsoft were massive assholes. they constantly added and changed requests and ideas, they treated the company like shit, and they basically drove the company down to bankruptcy. and here we are people are defending MS. did anybody really real the full article?