I was shocked to find out that the commercial and critical bomb APB is still alive

[BAD]

And there's mobile spinoffs coming. They got a new deal this year with some company to make mobile stuff while the core Dev keeps maintaining the central game.

I played the current gen console ports and it was awful. Really stuttered on PS4 Pro. Never bothered to try again on Xbox One X.

it was first famous as an MMO answer from the creator of Grand Theft Auto with robust visuals and a top of the line character creator, made by the devs of Crackdown.

First due on 360 and PC in 2008, it saw Years of delay and a cancelled 360 version. The devs spent over $100 million making it one of the most expensive games to ever release by 2010.

But it hurt itself out of the gate with an incredible review embargo that didn't allow reviews until after it was on sale for a full week to the public, who were already sharing reviews and blogs. This caused reviewers to criticize their practices right away.

The reviews themselves weren't good, pointing to an unfinished and unpolished experience.

The game was a bomb, the devs fell into administration months after launch, and the game was shut down.

It was bought by a new company and relaunched as APB Reloaded. This version never came to last gen consoles and moved companies a couple more times. It finally came to Xbox One in 2016, and PS4 a year later.

But surprise, it's still alive and still worth something because another company bought it out this year to add more mobile stuff.

Do you play this? Who is playing it?

 

[SnakeXs]

I remember it bombing and control shifting around but I saw it when perusing PS Now's catalog and was surprised as you.

Curious to see if we can find an active player. Ie 15% of the total active player base

 

[Dark Knight]

I remember being excited about this when it was first coming out lol.

Kind of remember the soundtrack being interesting.

 

[Ryuhza]

I remember playing it a bit wayyyy back when. It seemed like a lot of cool features in search of a game.

 

[Damn Silly]

I still have an APB shirt kicking around here somewhere (I live in the same city where Realtime Worlds...was, and visited the studio at some point before its closure)

 

[garion333]

Little Orbit has a number of failed or dying mp titles they're keeping alive on a shoestring budget:

APB
Fallen Earth (soon to go offline)

They also picked up the slack on Unsung Story once Playdek f-ed it up.

Basically they've been trying to reinvent themselves through some cheap additions.

 

[Grahf]

I watched a video about this last year or even before, was called "death of a game"...
Surprisingly it looks like APB is not entirely dead yet.
Maybe it'll warrant another video like this one : o (I must admit I discovered APB's existence through its "death" video)

 

[Phil me in]

Didn't the devs spend some of that 100 million on fast cars and stuff. I'm sure I read somewhere the money was misused. You could say they pulled a GTA on their GTA clone.

 

[I KILL PXLS]

Man, I remember the hype around this was pretty big. I saw a demo of it during PAX and everyone was blown away. What a disappointment.

 

[Skade]

I liked that game, too bad it was sooooo repetitive. Two months after the release, i had no interest in playing it again.

And all the updates i've seen being added to it with the multiple licence owner changes felt they would make it worse each time.

But in a way, i'm kinda glad it's still alive somehow. There's been so many games i've played at that time that don't exist anymore...

 

[Tangeroo]

It was horrendous. I paid full price for it and tried to get a refund for it from Steam after the first week. This was when Steam wasn't doing refunds and it went F2P months later. I was so pissed, I got Steam support to completely scrub the game from my library.