Have a feeling with Apex being such a success it'll go back up. I'd buy up some stock
Are you seriously blaming the artists and programmers for not immediately leaving when their employer was bought out by EA?
People need to make a living, man.
Anthem is gearing up to be a success so idk what you're on
In the long run I see Fortnite steamrolling it. Titanfall 3’s gonna get stuck in development (again) and I bet that’ll be the end of Respawn.
Dafuq
I doubt any of this would happen
You're conflating artists and engineers with management and marketing, as per usual. There are tons of people literally busting their asses every day in the trenches with the sole aim of entertaining people and making a worthwhile living and a positive mark on their industry.
All the Anthem demo did is convince my friends to play Warframe, and they tend to be the kind of people who buy AAA flavor of the month shooters the most. I think Anthem is going to be a dissapointment financially because people are getting wary of EA games in general after being burned so many times.
Digs against EA have a long history. After legally feuding with EA for some time, Origin Systems (the developers of Ultima and Wing Commander) included a posthumous character in Ultima VI called Captain Hawkins, who was a pirate so utterly cruel towards his crew that they killed him. Trip Hawkins being the founder and then CEO of EA.
In addition, the villain of Ultima VII causes all sorts of mayhem and destruction by using three magical generators. These generators are shaped like a cube, sphere and a tetrahedron. The connection? This was EAs logo at the time.
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/2/23/Electronic_Arts_historical_logo_80s.svg/300px-Electronic_Arts_historical_logo_80s.svg.png
could you imagine the avalanche of IPs up for grabs if EA died and their dragon's horde of game ideas were sold off?
Anthem may sell a lot of copies but EA just said in their earning call that they expect it to sell 5-6 million copies by the end of March.
Mass Effect 3 sold 3.5 million copies during its run.
Their estimate seems untenable, if it fails to meet it ultimately it will be deemed a failure by EA. This is the same situation that happened with Dead Space 3 that led to Visceral’s death spiral with Project Ragtag.
Elaborate.
jesus christ imagine waking up to a close up of that after a one night stand, in which he asks "so are you gonna buy the Anthem skins or the Origin full acess membership?"
he even smiles in a very "initiating smile.exe" kind of way
There's an immense feeling of Schadenfreude coming from the disgusting bloated monster that EA is being in some trouble after they've absolutely killed off so many of my fondly remembered game series. Just thinking about that fucking mobile dungeon keeper game to be what they decided to do with the IP after holding onto it for so long, as well as the disgusting mess they've done to command & conquer (and all of it's spin-offs) just really make me wonder what we could've gotten if they hadn't broken so many cool studios. There might've been a lot more blunders lately from companies like Konami, but EA will never cease being the personification of the "AAA-GAMING" market stagnation, lootboxes/DLC, and all around corporate greed for me.
I get it, we all dislike the state of AAA gaming, but how about instead of being edgelords calling for "another crash" and for this medium to die, we call for everyone to improve or be left behind?
Seriously. Every time someone says the industry should die, it makes me feel fucking sick because I absolutely adore the medium of video games. It's helped me a fuck ton in life to cope with things like depression and other forms of emotional trauma, and has resulted in me meeting some of the best friends I've ever had in my life. I'd rather not have that all come crumbling down just because we're upset about how pixels, polygons and code are monetized. It's fucking silly and juvenile. We should strive to help improve the industry and make it more consumer friendly, not wish it to die.
Video games are a form of art and should be celebrated, and we should foster an environment where they can be.
On that note, fuck EA definitely. Only thing I like about them isn't even them, it's Respawn. That's about it.
I don't think a lot of people are hoping the industry dies, I've played some amazing titles recently even with the state the AAA market is in. Personally I just think it's a pity that they were the exception rather than the norm, and they stick out amongst seas and seas of trash and mediocrity. I'm more for companies realizing that games sell better if you make a good product instead of trying to milk a turd they glued together as cheaply as possible, but I'm not holding my breath for companies like EA.
I'd like to think that most of us do strive for a healthier, more consumer friendly industry and that's why we enjoy the amazing titles when they come out. Those that aren't full of pointless microtransactions designed to milk you, those that have DLC that are the equivalent of old expansion packs, multiplayer games that don't try and shove lootboxes in after you've already payed 60 dollars, euros, whatever currency of choice you use.
The only painful part is these shit companies won't listen to anything but money, and voting with your wallet not only doesn't work in the sense they'll just blame you for not buying it, they'll toss whatever series away if it doesn't sell for huge $$$ like whatever the competition is doing. Hope the company dies off, and that the IPs get bought by someone who'll do them justice.
Calling for a crash =/= wanting the industry to die forever. Don't be so melodramatic.
It is calling for the industry to die though, or essentially be on its death bed, even if for only a few years. Hell, causing a crash in PC/console gaming could very well kill it forever in that section, as publishers get the full on excuse they need to go mobile only. And when AAA leaves the scene, players will leave the scene, which will cause indie devs to leave the scene/jump to mobile, which will cause even more players to leave the scene. I'd rather not have a future where everything goes to mobile gaming, because that would be even worse than the current state of affairs.
Not to mention wishing for a crash is wishing to put thousands of people out of a job that were not the decision makers behind some of these terrible business decisions.
Truly the optimal, efficient and beneficial solution here is to essentially call for reform instead of just burning the house down and attempting to make a new one from scratch, no? Especially if the same problems crop up again after doing so (which they will).
The industry crashed in 1983 and then only two years later made a comeback better than it was before. I should also mention that during that crash it was actually quite nice for consumers because everything became dirt cheap.
Sometimes a house is so rotten it needs to be demolished and rebuilt.
But here's the thing as well. The industry back then crashed and pretty much jumped back to the same effect as it was before. Who's to say the industry won't crash, and come back a few years later in the state it's in now, thus rendering the point of such a thing moot? Who's to say the industry won't bounce back to an even worse state of affairs in order to make up for the massive lost profits of such a crash? Or again, who's to say it won't just come back to be mobile games only, leaving PC and console in the dust?
Are thousands of lost jobs and a complete lack of new content from all parties for potentially a few years really worth games being dirt cheap? I'd say no. In fact, I'd think it would be incredibly selfish to even desire such a thing. Ideally, the industry should be reformed so that all parties can be satisfied, and if parties such as EA refuse to comply with the reformation, then they can gladly be left behind as the industry moves on after being reformed.
Keep in mind the PC gaming industry was pretty much unaffected by the crash.
I know that liking Star Citizen is a controversial topic and I get that people have shittons of criticisms about the project, justified or not, but this kind of shit is why I'm so intensely for the project: The whole point of Star Citizen going the crowdfunding route and not chaining itself to a publisher was exactly this, keeping the greedy suits out of the way because they'll hold wildly unrealistic expectations after giving the devs wildly short deadlines and working them half to death. SC's no stranger to fuckups and delays but the project is committed to doing the game properly instead of rushing a release to pay back a publisher's shareholders.
EA is a vampire that purchases studios, sucks them dry, and then discards the corpse. Ubisoft, Activision, Take Two, they're not as bad but they all make their studios rush shit out the door stuffed full of abusive microtransactions. The major players in the industry are converging on executive vampirism and, until it's declared illegal in too many parts of the world, deriving their primary income on lootboxes and other microtransactions. If no game can succeed without signing a contract with the devil, then the gaming industry as we have understood it in the past is doomed and the future is mobile-style microtransactions and always-online everywhere.
I want SC to succeed precisely because it will be concrete proof that you might need a lot of luck and might need to take some crazy risks but you can make a big game without needing to sell out to the corporate scumlords. My hope is that it will inspire other games to find alternate methods of securing funding instead of perpetuating the same cycle of shitty releases and dead studios in every ditch. I'm tired of greedy publishers taking really amazing game concepts and hacking off everything that keeps the game from shipping in 2-3 years for a Christmas release and even after neutering everything that makes the game unique it still releases as a buggy shitfest that requires months of patches to unfuck. Say what you like about SC but you cannot say that the devs are rushing to release, and many games would benefit from the attitude.
My big hope is that in ten years the industry will be different and Star Citizen will have led the way by showing that you don't need a publisher if you've got the smarts, the skills, and the fans. I'll be sad if SC shits the bed and the industry just keeps making consumers drink their own piss no matter how much they complain about the taste.
I know, and that's because PC's could be used for games AND work so people thought they were a better investment.
You're asking for a near miracle with the current greed and anti-consumer practices that infest the industry. Imo these fuckin companies need to be bludgeoned over the head before they listen to consumers. To go even further they are a cancer that must be removed, no matter the cost.
Sure, Anthem might do relatively well- but "success" is a relative term here.
To succeed in the eyes of the publisher, Anthem needs to sell as many units as EA has promised their shareholders it will.
And it fucking wont. Do you not remember what happened to Dead Space? EA culled the franchise because they expected the third instalment in a niche sci-fi horror franchise to make Call Of Duty levels of money in order to be deemed successful.
It's not enough for a game to make a decent amount of money in the AAA gaming industry. It needs to make all of the money -more money than is being made by any other game at the time to be considered a success worth investing in further.
The only shocking thing is that this semi-crash that's happening to AAA-studios didn't happen sooner.
Are you saying that there are repercussions to treating customers like shit? Who woulda thunk it!
You can poke a sleeping giant many times but eventually he will wake and start dishing out consequences.
The one thing from this I'd like to note is that one shoulden't celebrate quite yet - stocks falling across the board on many video game publishers. Even pretty clean ones like Take-Two despite the success of RDR2 late last year.
If you think "This'll totally be the end of EA" then I'm sorry but EA are cockroaches and it's pretty hard to kill cockroaches
I think we should stop looking at the companies, but instead glare at the CEO's: Andrew Wilson, Bobby NoDick, Hideki Hayakawa. I personally don't care about Bethesda because they used Fallout 76 as a kickstarter for Elder Scrolls 6 and Starfield(that's what I heard from other people, I could be wrong, but it's pretty obvious such a cheap game would be considered a fundraiser).
Two words: Shark Cards. Take Two isn't clean by a long shot. And they're doing it all over again with RDR2 Online.
But I agree with your broader point, I don't think this will be the "death" of the major publishers. They won't die until the gaming consumer market collectively either gets fed up with their shit or is given a better alternative (competing games made by companies with greater respect for the consumer). Until like >65% of people who buy games today stop buying them from the big boys, they're in no existential danger at all.
But they can still be embarrassed by the invisible hand of the market giving them five on the cheek. A public bruising isn't fatal but it smarts.
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