I honestly don't understand why companies are insisting on spending so much of AAA games when so many big hits the past few years have been smaller fair. It feels like they're shooting themselves in the foot. Maybe you lose some sales if the game isn't absolutely top of the line tech/graphics/content-wise, but presumably you'd make that difference in smaller development cost.
I mean they're rebooting the movie universe with a big Superman movie, basically putting their hopes in revitalizing the brand. I don't think we're gonna see any less DC due to this.
The Microsoft court documents leak indicated that Microsoft expected to pay ~$250M to bring Suicide Squad to Game Pass. Just how much did WB spend on the production of this game if they still lost $200M?
WB is about to become a full time Harry Potter Studio. Solo single player game every few years + live service game
In fairness, this isn't Live Service Justice League, if anything, that franchise would be more appropriate for a game like this, the team is used to fighting Brainiac level threats and bigger, and the characters are more iconic and beloved.
Sorry, i know Suicide Squad has it's fans, but how many people really really love Captain Boomerang?
Or Deadshot, even with Ostrander's legendary run and the movies they didn't exactly become really popular villains, King Shark a lot less, Harley Quinn is the standout but i would gather she is still less iconic than the Justice League.
I mean, those are all characters that have been around for decades, some are older than our grandparents and have been in beloved shows and movies before Harley Quinn was even created, even if you want to say Flash and Green Lantern aren't that big, they were still in the Justice League cartoon and movie...also Flash had a show that ran for 9 seasons...so they still have their fans.
Even with superhero haters or fatigue, there is still a level of nostalgia and love towards them that doesn't go away, not to mention each member in the game is unique and has powers, gadgets or equipment that would make them more fun to play than the Suicide Squad...to a point where the game shoves in equipment to kinda force some kind of Justice League gameplay on the team, like Captain Boomerang being a speedster in one second or two because of a device left in a museum.
So i think a game where you play as them would sell more or at least be seen less as a "Why do it?" kind of game at least, instead, they made a game where you play as villains, only one of which is really popular and have you killing the Justice League instead.
I mean, they could have even just made a game where they are brainwashed and you knock them out of it or whatever, but nope, they went full in with the murder, and the museum and some scenes really establish the team were truly heroic before the events of the game, i mean, the Flash saves the Suicide Squad and tries to help before being brainwashed, Wonder Woman doesn't trust the team for good reason but is still heroic and some parts imply Superman was a pure good hearted boy scout of a hero before being corrupted...so have fun killing him with a bunch of villains that aren't even related to him at all.
Why doesn't every movie do as well as Barbie and Oppenheimer
why doesn't every game do as well as Hogwarts Legacy
companies run by these kind of morons are amazing.
why doesn't every game do as well as Hogwarts Legacy
companies run by these kind of morons are amazing.
The moment that Battlepass image got leaked, the game's failure was obvious. Honestly, I just don't see how this model would work for a game like that. And I guess that's the main issue here, their main focus is to make a live service without consideration of how a game can work with it while still being engaging.
Oh right - the asset impairment loss would be recorded "below the line" as an expense rather than as a direct charge against revenue.
These brain worm executives don't see a single player game in Hogwarts Legacy succeeding as a signal to make more single player games.
They see it as "oh if we had made it live service we could have made that same money continuously instead of once off!"
Bunch of fools.
They see it as "oh if we had made it live service we could have made that same money continuously instead of once off!"
Bunch of fools.
The even wilder part is, with their catalogue of IP they could theoretically have a Harry Potter potential of success every year if they just played their cards right. DC alone could accomplish that with Batman, Superman and Wonder Woman games on rotation, now throw in Mortal Kombat/Injustice, Harry Potter and LEGO and you have a solid roster. Not to mention they could throw in more IP's like Game of Thrones, The Matrix and whatever else they got in the vault.
You can say that people complained and said they didn't want to buy the game before it released, but people can change opinions, i guess WB expected people to change their mind once the game actually released.
The majority of folks that made the Arkham games left the studio long ago.
Given they're $200M in the hole, Rocksteady very likely won't exist a year from now. At least not as a AAA developer.
The gaming audience also has a decades long history of getting wound up about something then buying the game anyway. I think the main difference here is the general excitement level. The games people bought anyway were ones they were excited about like Modern Warfare 2 (the first one). There was already a lack of excitement about this game and it's really easy to skip a game you're not excited about or wait for a sale if you're on the fence.
I think they expected it to be a disappointment, not crater to nothing. Looking at it as a GaaS perspective, Suicide Squad has managed a 24 hour concurrent peak of 158 users today, compared to the delisted after disappointing sales (and released nearly 4 years ago) Marvel's Avengers, which has a 24 hour concurrent peak of 191 users.
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Gotham Knights really should have been the GAAS push and not Suicide Squad.
At the absolute minimum people would care more about Batgirl, Robin and Nightwing skins over anyone but maybe Harley.
Could also sell way more popular characters than Suicide Squad allows
Batman
Catwoman
Green Arrow
Black Canary
Batwoman
Etc
At the absolute minimum people would care more about Batgirl, Robin and Nightwing skins over anyone but maybe Harley.
Could also sell way more popular characters than Suicide Squad allows
Batman
Catwoman
Green Arrow
Black Canary
Batwoman
Etc
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The sad thing is a new Batman Arkham game by Rocksteady is about as safe a bet as it gets.
When they run out of feet will they start shooting off hands or just jump straight to the head?
Sad thing is you could actually do so much cool shit with Gotham Knights in its place but WB pushed Suicide Squad
Like imagine Season 2 of Gotham Knights being "Titans" themed and Red Arrow is the new character, Slade or Cheshire come to Gotham and Nightwing and Red Arrow have a co-op chapter kicking them out of Gotham.
you could literally do tons of those
A Birds of Prey villain is trying to move in on Gotham, here's Black Canary to team up with Batgirl to take them down.
Season 3.... Batman Beyond
Batman really wasn't supposed to die so Terry comes back in time to stop it.
Terry Batman is the new character(since its post game he includes all his overpowered abilities like flying and stealth camo)
Yeah. Anthem was a dev-Hell riddled failure, but it was a decade ago. This had about as long a dev cycle, while costs have increased, AND it failed even harder.
Man I withered to dust before I looked at the wikipedia page and it was only 5 years ago lol
On the bright side it's good that failures this big come from doing virtually everything wrong. This is following through on a project that has every indication it should have been shelved.
You have to pivot when Anthem comes out in 2019 and fails. You have to pivot when The Division 2 underperforms. You have to pivot when Activision is willing to let go of Destiny, and Destiny 2 goes free to play. You can't be half a decade behind the audience.
Warner Bros. Games canceled a 5th Arkham game, apparently months (or even a few weeks) before it was set to be announced. If they had done the same with Suicide Squad KTJL then Rocksteady would now be four years into a different project.
You have to pivot when Anthem comes out in 2019 and fails. You have to pivot when The Division 2 underperforms. You have to pivot when Activision is willing to let go of Destiny, and Destiny 2 goes free to play. You can't be half a decade behind the audience.
Warner Bros. Games canceled a 5th Arkham game, apparently months (or even a few weeks) before it was set to be announced. If they had done the same with Suicide Squad KTJL then Rocksteady would now be four years into a different project.
Nah I'd rather they do something else. The team that made Arkham series great is long gone and after KTJL I don't particularly want them in DC land again.
Are they actually $200M in the hole? The wording was kind of weird. Hogwarts was such a big boost last year I can't see them being that just from SS's release...
That's the thing, though. The people making these poor decisions are precisely the ones who will be most insulated from the fallout. So a lack of sympathy is irrelevant. It will only get people fired who did what they were told to do as well as they could.
The worst part about this whole thing, is that at no point in time was this game something most people were excited for. Just about everyone thought it sounded bad, then we saw it and thought it looked bad, then they showed more and we really disliked it so they delayed it a bit to fix some stuff, but it still didn't fix the overall problem of it just sounding like a bad game, and a terrible game for the Arkham devs to be wasting there time on.
Just disappointment all around for everyone.
Just disappointment all around for everyone.
It's honestly impressive how misaligned the developers and the audience were with this one.
A live service game that's all about damage numbers going up from a developer renowned for singleplayer games
A game starring the the sucide squad that no one really cares about
A game about fighting and killing the justice league, characters people would have had much rather a game about
A sad send off to the Arkham trilogy
A live service game that's all about damage numbers going up from a developer renowned for singleplayer games
A game starring the the sucide squad that no one really cares about
A game about fighting and killing the justice league, characters people would have had much rather a game about
A sad send off to the Arkham trilogy
Shit really? Time has ceased having meaning. Nothing I remember happened any less than a decade ago, because I am an old.
Their biggest selling game and one of the biggest overall games of the year was a single player game
Maybe do more of those
Maybe do more of those
I think the response to the trailer for the first suicide squad movie (the one with bohemian rhapsody) was far more consequential than any of us realized.
I still don't understand why Anthem wasn't just Mass Effect adjacent.
Andromeda got fucked up and then Anthem was something nobody wanted.
Let Andromeda establish that universe and work as the main single player portion then Mass Effect Anthem is the co-op GAAS element.
Would have helped Anthem and likely the Mass Effect franchise as well.
They're not $200 million "in the hole". Revenue declined by $200 million relative to the significant Hogwarts Legacy anomaly that was the previous year.
Its just complete stubbornness,
Montreal was making a Suicide Squad game which at the time made complete sense.
Wasn't coming together so it shifted to Rocksteady, should have called it there and taken the relatively smaller hit
And you'd be right to do so because a failure this big in this climate is basically a death sentence.
No revenue was down 400 million YoY, the 200 million was the net income loss basically:
"Starting with Studios, the $400 million+ year-over-year decline during Q1 was primarily due to the very tough comp we faced in games against the success of Hogwart's Legacy last year in the first quarter, in conjunction with the disappointing Suicide Squad release this past quarter, which we impaired, leading to a $200 million impact to EBITDA during the first quarter,"
It's like when Curt Schilling thought he could become as rich as Bill Gates by merely creating and launching a WOW competitor, except instead of a dilettante baseball player, it's executives who've spent years in this industry.