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Or is it just one of Phil's balls in my throat?
Creating a sacrificial alter for Forspoken's 2nd birthday
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Lets decide the biggest bomb in video game history
- Thread starter The Chairman
- Start date
Creating a sacrificial alter for Forspoken's 2nd birthday
touchfuzzy
Member
Bro, Mario Wonder has sold like 15 million copies.
NecrosaroIII
Ultimate DQ Fan
Add Final Fantasy XIV 1.0 to that list. They had to nuke the game in order to revive it.
DonkeyPunchJr
World’s Biggest Weeb
After getting shat on for liking Forspoken and then getting a temp ban, I think he transitioned to Era.
It’s a real bummer. It’s no fun trashing a game unless there’s that one guy who defends it like he’s defending his own children.
Kiya's Guard
Member
With the craze I meant the collective beating from part of the entire Internet. Sony already spent a lot of resources on making it, I don't think it would cost them much to design a monetisation scheme and try a couple months. I don't care what happens to this or any overtly woke game, but sometimes it feels sad to see a game becoming the dead horse of the internet
It would have been profitable for Take-Two because 3D Realms self-financed development until they went under. Probably the total development cost would have been below $30 million though due to the development team having only ~30 people and 3D Realms under paying their employees with the promise of future royalties.got official info from wiki itself
Duke Nukem Forever - Wikipedia
en.wikipedia.org
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semiconscious
Member
why would I have to wait 10 years to call redfall a failure? or a cancelled tv series or movie a failure? you really feel that there's something so inherently valuable in the various assets created for concord that they'll likely be of great use in creating some future highly successful game? or that the developers, having learned from their mistakes, are now destined to produce a smash hit next time out (if there is one)?...
the 200m investment will somewhat return in the form of a tax write-off, & a clear, coherent manual on 'what not to do when attempting to create a blockbuster'. & that's about it. concord failed. end of story...
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StreetsofBeige
Gold Member
I dont get why Anthem is on the list. Ya, it got bad reviews, but sold 5M copies and after 5 and a half years the servers are still active according to google check.
Sentenza
Member
Probably figuring out a way to blame all this on his 4080 that he never wants to game on, because it's not as good as his playstation.
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Palabragrís
Member
Of gaming as it is, it has to be E.T. for the Atari 2600, which contributed greatly to the 1983 gaming crash. Now, talking just modern gaming industry, no doubt it is Concord. It remains to be seen if it will contribute to a possible new gaming crash.
Timberwolf25
Member
Recency bias?
Next year; and the year after next; and the year after that, Concord will still be a massive bomb. The only way it moves down the list is if another massive bomb comes out to replace it.
Next year; and the year after next; and the year after that, Concord will still be a massive bomb. The only way it moves down the list is if another massive bomb comes out to replace it.
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Hero_Select
Member
Andromeda was/is a good game.
Humdinger
Member
Yeah, I agree.* We don't really know the end of Concord's story yet. It ain't over till the fat medic sings. Sony could rejigger it, issue it as a F2P game, and recoup some of their losses. I'm not saying they'll make a profit, but they could recover some ground, so that it's not a total loss. If I were them, I'd redesign the hideous characters, lose the pronouns and diversity quotas, and slap a new name on it. But they probably won't, because diversity.
*except for the part about having to wait 5 or 10 years to make the call. I'd think 2 or 3 years, tops.
diffusionx
Gold Member
The game lasted 3 weeks and bro says wait 10 years to make a judgement lmao
Rejiggering is not free. Reissuing the game as a F2P is not free. Redesigning characters is definitely not free. All this stuff costs money, which means the game needs to earn even more money back and requires a further investment. And you also have to keep investing in the game to maintain it as a F2P. It's not just like, setting up a few servers.
I don't see in what world Sony goes down that path. Imagine if it flops as F2P, which is by far the most likely outcome. Nobody cared about the game when it actually was free to play.
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Rocco Schiavone
Member
Concord devs would be happy If they would have ever reached the sales from ET.
kruis
Exposing the sinister cartel of retailers who allow companies to pay for advertising space.
Concord "wins" in every respect compared to Babylon's Fall.
- 8 years in development
- 100+ million dollar budget,
- Sony bought the entire studio just to get their hands on Concord
- max 25K copies sold (PS5/PC)
- went within a week from 649 concurrent users (peak) to 58 CCU (low) on Steam
- announcement of server shutdown after just 9 days after launch
- refunds to everyone who bought the game
- didn't get even one single update
Babylon's Fall was no doubt much cheaper to make, had a higher CCU peak, the game was playable for a full year, got a good number of quest updates and Square Enix didn't gave players their money back. BF did have a worse metacritic score than Concord.
newtypepilot
Member
ET wasn't a bomb though. It sold 1.5m copies. It failed because Atari produced way too many copies. It had the biggest impact as it led to the crash in 83.
Software wise, Concord has to be up there, and not because of recency bias. I can't think of another game that had extremely poor sales, expensive development, and laughably short shelf life. It's the perfect trifecta. What other games lasted only 2 weeks??? Even Babylon's Fall lasted more than 6 months before it got shut down.
Hardwise wise, I'd say virtural boy and apple pippin.
Software wise, Concord has to be up there, and not because of recency bias. I can't think of another game that had extremely poor sales, expensive development, and laughably short shelf life. It's the perfect trifecta. What other games lasted only 2 weeks??? Even Babylon's Fall lasted more than 6 months before it got shut down.
Hardwise wise, I'd say virtural boy and apple pippin.
Killer8
Member
I would say Suicide Squad. I imagine its budget was quite a bit higher than Concord's. I believe it's been widely reported that SS lost Warner Bros $200 million, whereas Concord's loss is more difficult to speculate about right now.
Suicide Squad is also the bigger flop in terms of the developer's quality downfall. Most of the games on the list, Concord included, we expected to be shit pre-release. Suicide Squad was coming from Rocksteady though, developers of the fantastic Batman Arkham series. You can say we should've known it would be shit as it was a live service game, but I don't think anyone could've braced themselves for just how shit it was. Firesprite on the other hand was a no-name from the start.
The most outrageous thing though was that Suicide Squad was the last time Kevin Conroy will ever get to voice Batman before his death. That is a travesty that no financial loss can outweigh.
Suicide Squad is also the bigger flop in terms of the developer's quality downfall. Most of the games on the list, Concord included, we expected to be shit pre-release. Suicide Squad was coming from Rocksteady though, developers of the fantastic Batman Arkham series. You can say we should've known it would be shit as it was a live service game, but I don't think anyone could've braced themselves for just how shit it was. Firesprite on the other hand was a no-name from the start.
The most outrageous thing though was that Suicide Squad was the last time Kevin Conroy will ever get to voice Batman before his death. That is a travesty that no financial loss can outweigh.
aygomyownroad
Member
ET was made during a time when games were for geeks. It failed but then the hobby was in its infancy.
Concorde crashed and burned within a week. Millions spent on it, on a console and PC with hundreds of millions of prospective players...
Concorde should be the nail in the GAAA coffin for Sony
Concorde crashed and burned within a week. Millions spent on it, on a console and PC with hundreds of millions of prospective players...
Concorde should be the nail in the GAAA coffin for Sony
kruis
Exposing the sinister cartel of retailers who allow companies to pay for advertising space.
ET didn't crash the market, it's failure was a sign that the market had changed.
The importance of ET is widely overstated. It didn't kill videogames. You can make a case that games consoles died in December 82 because home computers took over. The Commodore 64 came on the market a few months earlier in August 82 and that machine was a huge success as a games machine. Home computers made computer gaming finally affordable to the masses with much lower prices (and easy piracy). The C64's graphics and sound were so much better than the Atari 2600, it wasn't a contest at all.
S0ULZB0URNE
Member
Redfall,Crackdown 3 and Haze need to be added to the poll.
E.T. didn't "crash the video games industry". Due to being a big name, and the circumstances around it, it became the poster child, but the real issue leading to the crash was the glut of crappy software. Once the 2600 was reverse-engineered, anybody who wanted to could release cartridges and everybody wanted to. There was a lot of crap produced, just like today, and all those cartridges sitting on store shelves and not selling meant that retailers were marking their inventory way down and not ordering new stuff. That was the crash. That's also why Nintendo made the policy that all third-party games had to be approved and manufactured by them with the "Nintendo Seal of Quality". Nintendo also limited how many titles a company could release annually, so the bigger companies created subsidiaries to get around that. Nintendo saw what caused the crash, and it wasn't E.T.
As for Concord, that's definitely the biggest bomb. I like how people are saying it just needs to go F2P to get some success, which ignores that it was F2P during the open beta, and nobody was playing it. I'll be really surprised if Sony invests any more money in it, I think they're too smart for that, or at least I'd hope so.
As for Concord, that's definitely the biggest bomb. I like how people are saying it just needs to go F2P to get some success, which ignores that it was F2P during the open beta, and nobody was playing it. I'll be really surprised if Sony invests any more money in it, I think they're too smart for that, or at least I'd hope so.
Chukhopops
Member
I forgot it was US data but still, just below FIFA and above a lot of other games.
Porcile
Member
I remember a launch event in Japan for No More Heroes 1 for the Wii and Suda 51 turned up to give out NMH themed toilet rolls and about two people showed up. Then the game sold like dogshit in Japan. I think a few thousand units? Felt really bad for the guy but NMH is still a franchise today so the fact that it has had some longevity despite the odds is quite amazing.
Sentenza
Member
There are quite possibly more people on the "niche" that heard about Concord and made a joke about it in the last two weeks that there were people who played videogames in general in 1982.
This MYTH of "the entire industry collapsing when ET released" that Americans keep telling to each other is basically a fanfiction.
Here's a fun fact: the phenomenon was barely even noticed here in Europe where most people used home computers rather than consoles, to begin with.
And barely two years later the NES released and started its ascension, growing the US console market to levels it never knew before, anyway.
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ShirAhava
Plays with kids toys, in the adult gaming world
I said ALMOST. its a what if .....the idea that one game failing made that even a remote possibility is pretty wild
I knew someone was going to make this exact response which is why I mentioned the UK/Amiga
(even tho I'd argue those home computers are a different market completely)
There were various other factors going on at the time that led to the so-called crash
ET was one of 4 really bad things that happened around the same time
ReyBrujo
Gold Member
Yeah, hard to understand for fanboys.
BigLee74
Member
I actually really liked it. Huge load times, and very very inconsistent (some levels were clearly developed years before others), but it was mostly fun!Defo not duke nukem, i played that game, wasnt great but for a fan of the genre it was mediocre/bit bad but not extremly terrible
Timberwolf25
Member
And 3 weeks is being generous. Wasn't the game getting booted announced on Day 9...might've been 11, but less than 2 weeks for sure.
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T4keD0wN
Member
Should divide it to 2 categories:
Which one made the lowest percentage of its budget back?
Probably Concord followed by Babylons Fall (Babylons Fall was definitely cheaper to make, Concord has a disadvantage of being made in a country with much higher wages)
Which one lost the most money in total?
Probably Suicide Squad - formerly prestigeous studio located in London should pay the most, combined with long development it probably also had the highest head count and budget
Anthem, Andromeda and Avengers would probably be the best 3 performers, followed by Forspoken in the 4th in both cases. ET mightve been felt the most, but its peanuts when comparing financials
Which one made the lowest percentage of its budget back?
Probably Concord followed by Babylons Fall (Babylons Fall was definitely cheaper to make, Concord has a disadvantage of being made in a country with much higher wages)
Which one lost the most money in total?
Probably Suicide Squad - formerly prestigeous studio located in London should pay the most, combined with long development it probably also had the highest head count and budget
Anthem, Andromeda and Avengers would probably be the best 3 performers, followed by Forspoken in the 4th in both cases. ET mightve been felt the most, but its peanuts when comparing financials
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Pelao
Member
Obviously most, if not all of the other examples are bigger commercial failures, but I think in terms of cultural legacy, nothing is ever going to dethrone E.T. While you may argue that its role is overblown, many still associate it as the cause of the Videogame Crash.
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Humdinger
Member
That's true. It's a risk, like all game development is a risk. I just don't see them throwing the whole thing in the dust bin. There is a lot invested there. I don't think they'll just say, "Oh well, lesson learned, let's move on." They'll try to recoup some of their losses. Whether they will or not, neither you nor I can say. But I can't see them not trying.
It wouldn't take that much effort to redesign characters. I think it will take more will than money.
I'm just hearing the phrase "Thanos-snapped" for the first time today. I'm so behind the curve...
People have two different ways of approaching the question. One set of people are gauging failure strictly in financial terms - how much money did the game lose. From that perspective, Concord is likely the winner at least as it stands now, although the story isn't over yet.
Another set of people are looking at a wider context, including the failure of the game at the time it happened, its impact on the company and on the industry as a whole. From that perspective, Concord is indeed just a blip, and ET is clearly the bigger bomb.
But it depends how you look at it.
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diffusionx
Gold Member
Are you familiar with the sunken cost fallacy? The money is spent. It's gone. The game already failed. The damage is done. They could get back a chunk of it back in taxes by just chucking it in the garbage. The question is now, what is the best decision they can make. Spending a bunch of money to retrofit the game in a almost certainly futile attempt to make back some of the money is the worst idea.
Now, if they feel that they could retrofit the game and make it sustainable for years to come as a successful gaashit, they should do that. But my question is, why and how? And who? The same people who brought this game to market?
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Humdinger
Member
Yes, I'm familiar with sunk cost. I'm sure Sony execs are, too.
You got me. I hope you aren't expecting me to answer those questions. Those are questions for Sony. But it does seem to me, at least judging by the statement, that Sony does plan to reconfigure the game somehow, presumably as a F2P. I hope they make the other changes as well, but of course I have no idea what they will do.
Timberwolf25
Member
Keep in mind that these are the same people that took 8 years to bring you the crap they released. A redesign going by their timetable could take another 2 years