Babylon's Landfill (was "Babylon's Fall")

[Mr. Gerbik]

3 hours ago, Triple A said:

present the numbers you have which prove the projects you're defending, as profitable

Oh this was a big news item back then, you can google it yourself surely. I remember it because I wrote an article about it back then. As did almost every other site. 

[Mr. Gerbik]

3 hours ago, moosegrinder said:

So you're saying hitman and Tomb Raider weren't profitable after selling millions of copies?

 

What Gerbik is saying is that Square Enix have a history of massive inflated expectations of sales which games never meet to offset their spending elsewhere.

 

None of their 'western' games ever sell to their expectations. Just Google "tomb raider sales square Enix" and you get results as far back as 2013 saying the same thing they said about Guardians.

 

Whether someone shows you exact projection numbers Vs profit (which we obviously can't) or not even a layman idiot like me can see Squeenix is a company with a deep history of ridiculous targets attempting to offset whatever the hell else they've been doing with their money. They repeat the same lines over and over and over.

What @Triple Ais also forgetting by focusing on just one aspect, is that Guardians turned out to be a very popular and acclaimed game. This despite everything being against it coming straight after the horrendous mess that was The Avengers. A half competent publisher could see the potential for a sequel to build on this popularity and do bigger numbers. Especially since the MCU is likely to remain popular for some time and there's a new Guardians movie coming. Not Squeenix of course.

[mushashi]

12 hours ago, Mr. Gerbik said:

What @Triple Ais also forgetting by focusing on just one aspect, is that Guardians turned out to be a very popular and acclaimed game. This despite everything being against it coming straight after the horrendous mess that was The Avengers. A half competent publisher could see the potential for a sequel to build on this popularity and do bigger numbers. Especially since the MCU is likely to remain popular for some time and there's a new Guardians movie coming. Not Squeenix of course.

 

But would it really?

 

Looking at how much rope Square-Enix have given their Western purchases, they've been incredibly lenient. They attempted to use the various brands that Eidos had acquired over the years to build successful game series like their famous successful Japanese brands, but the results have never been that great.

 

Even Tomb Raider, which is the most successful Western brand they own has gone in the wrong direction and not fulfilled its potential to the extent they've backburnered it as both the developers who were working on it were moved on to doing licensed games (which in itself is an interesting trend emerging from practically every major publisher left, the fact the games industry is going backwards in having to rely on the crutch of other media's famous brands to make a hit product isn't a great sign) or in the case of Crystal Dynamics, the ignominy of being rented out to another publisher to do grunt work.

 

The Japanese publishers have struggled in general to get out a major sustainable hit from their Western assets, but they have no choice but to continue trying.

[dreamylittledream]

On 26/02/2022 at 22:35, mushashi said:

 

The reboot only became profitable after the release of the Next Gen version and having sold a shittonne of copies. The problem being the small niggle of them having to firesale most of those sales. If they'd have sold the expected amount at fullprice, then it would have met expectations and become profitable way earlier. That's always the problem with people without access to the P&L report, they just equate copies sold as all being equal, the amount of money each copy gets sold for is also fairly important which is why NPD is ranked by revenue, and not copies sold.

 

 

https://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2014-01-17-tomb-raider-finally-achieved-profitability-by-the-end-of-last-year

 

 

On 27/02/2022 at 11:40, mushashi said:

 

But would it really?

 

Looking at how much rope Square-Enix have given their Western purchases, they've been incredibly lenient. They attempted to use the various brands that Eidos had acquired over the years to build successful game series like their famous successful Japanese brands, but the results have never been that great.

 

Even Tomb Raider, which is the most successful Western brand they own has gone in the wrong direction and not fulfilled its potential to the extent they've backburnered it as both the developers who were working on it were moved on to doing licensed games (which in itself is an interesting trend emerging from practically every major publisher left, the fact the games industry is going backwards in having to rely on the crutch of other media's famous brands to make a hit product isn't a great sign) or in the case of Crystal Dynamics, the ignominy of being rented out to another publisher to do grunt work.

 

The Japanese publishers have struggled in general to get out a major sustainable hit from their Western assets, but they have no choice but to continue trying.

Above noted but Tomb Raider 2013 sold 3.4 million in its first month which is almost as much as the previous instalment (Underworld) managed full stop.

 

It eventually did 14.5 million copies, more than TR1 & 2 together sold collectively.

 

Rise did 11.8 million copies (plus whatever Microsoft paid for that 1 year console exclusivity) and Shadow 8.9 mil making the reboot trilogy comfortably the most successful games in the franchises history.

 

Either Square had massively unrealistic expectations and completely lost control of the budget on these games or they were using the same accountant as George Lucas on ROTJ in claiming low/no profit..

[Cyhwuhx]

 

OK then...

[Qazimod]

 

[RubberJohnny]

Babylon's Fall bombs on PC, with a launch day peak of under 1,000 players

 

Quote

 

According to SteamDB, the Steam version of Babylon’s Fall reached an all-time peak of 650 players today, meaning there were even fewer PC players during the early access period. It’s true that not every game can pull big numbers, but less than 1,000 players on day one do not bode well for its longevity. Of course, PC is only one platform.

 

Babylon’s Fall is also available on PlayStation 4 and PlayStation 5. We don’t know how well the console versions fared, but the game’s early access period offers some insight. According to a Tweet from official Babylon’s Fall English Twitter account, 10,000 total Sentinels have joined the fight. It’s unclear how these numbers were determined as the tweet was posted during the final day of early access.

 

Each person is capable of creating more than one Sentinel. Is each individual Sentinel counted rather than the person’s account? There’s also the free demo, which carries save data over into the final release. Players would have had to register with a Square Enix account upon booting up the demo. Are those demo players also included in the 10K figure? We don’t have all the data, but things aren’t looking good for Babylon’s Fall.

 

If they're going to do these GAAS things, then they should be F2P, $70 plus microtransactions for a game reusing assets from a 2012 MMO is ridiculous.

[moosegrinder]

Looking forward to Squeenix bemoaning how poorly it's done 

[Cyhwuhx]

 

And they normally like the hacky-slashy stuff.

[Keyboard Koala]

Babylon's Fall -

When you order Elden Ring from Wish... 

[Qazimod]

1 hour ago, Keyboard Koala said:

Babylon's Fall -

When you order Elden Ring from Wish... 

 

“I wanted Elden Ring!”

”honey we have Elden Ring at home”

Elden Ring at home:

[Qazimod]

Seen on Discord:

 

 

Has your £94.99 ever been better spent?

 

Spoiler

 

[mushashi]

On 28/02/2022 at 21:01, dreamylittledream said:

 

Above noted but Tomb Raider 2013 sold 3.4 million in its first month which is almost as much as the previous instalment (Underworld) managed full stop.

 

It eventually did 14.5 million copies, more than TR1 & 2 together sold collectively.

 

Rise did 11.8 million copies (plus whatever Microsoft paid for that 1 year console exclusivity) and Shadow 8.9 mil making the reboot trilogy comfortably the most successful games in the franchises history.

 

Either Square had massively unrealistic expectations and completely lost control of the budget on these games or they were using the same accountant as George Lucas on ROTJ in claiming low/no profit..

 

I use a simple rule when it comes to likely financial success for a game, does it get a sequel and how quickly. This is the easiest way to work out if a game was a hit for a publisher without access to the confidential financial documents showing how much they spent and got in return.

 

You've made the same assumption that originally started this discussion, that all that matters is copies sold, not how much each copy was sold for and how much profit each copy generated for the publisher, who ultimately takes on the risk of it all.

 

Without somebody willing to pay for it to be created and then being compensated at a level that makes them think it was worth spunking the sort of money that would bankrupt at least 99.99999% of this forum, how else are you expecting to get new games to play? unless we all want developers to work for the love of the artform.

 

And the evidence for Tomb Raider, despite all those Millions of copies sold, is that the 'most successful' game trilogy in the history of the series didn't do so amazingly financially to automatically mean the publisher wanted more of it ASAP, instead of pursuing alternatives.

 

It's like finding out the teams behind Dragon Quest and Final Fantasy were put onto making One Piece or Dragon Ball games instead of more sequels.

 

Wolfenstein did so amazingly well that MachineGames is now working on an Indiana Jones game too.

[dreamylittledream]

24 minutes ago, mushashi said:

 

I use a simple rule when it comes to likely financial success for a game, does it get a sequel and how quickly. This is the easiest way to work out if a game was a hit for a publisher without access to the confidential financial documents showing how much they spent and got in return.

 

You've made the same assumption that originally started this discussion, that all that matters is copies sold, not how much each copy was sold for and how much profit each copy generated for the publisher, who ultimately takes on the risk of it all.

 

And the evidence for Tomb Raider, despite all those Millions of copies sold, is that the 'most successful' game trilogy in the history of the series didn't do so amazingly financially to automatically mean the publisher wanted more of it ASAP, instead of pursuing alternatives.

 

 

Right….so Tomb Raider (2013) as we’ve highlighted the most successful game in a very long running series by a mile got a sequel in the immediate reasonable development window for a triple A game (2015) and was Crystal Dynamics next project.

 

So we’re agreed it was vey successful then?

 

I really have no idea what you are arguing at this point?

[RubberJohnny]

I think if you're looking for other Square Enix failures to point to, you'd be better to go with A Quiet Man (2018), Left Alive (2019) Avengers (2020), Balan Wonderworld (2021), and maybe, if you're feeling spicy, the upcoming Forspoken (2022) rather than the one franchise that seems to sell a couple of million copies minimum on name recognition alone.

[Keyboard Koala]

 

 

 

Serves them right, really. Everything about this game is about taking the piss out of potential customers.

You can fool some of the people some of the time etc.

[Triple A]

On 26/02/2022 at 22:55, Mr. Gerbik said:

Oh this was a big news item back then, you can google it yourself surely. I remember it because I wrote an article about it back then. As did almost every other site. 

 

On 26/02/2022 at 23:01, Mr. Gerbik said:

What @Triple Ais also forgetting by focusing on just one aspect, is that Guardians turned out to be a very popular and acclaimed game. This despite everything being against it coming straight after the horrendous mess that was The Avengers. A half competent publisher could see the potential for a sequel to build on this popularity and do bigger numbers. Especially since the MCU is likely to remain popular for some time and there's a new Guardians movie coming. Not Squeenix of course.

Coming back to this as I got sucked into Elden Ring.

 

I had already seen the news reports, however representative they may or may not have been.

 

Selling however many that were sold eventually, does not equate to meeting or not meeting expectations - especially what those expectations may have been at what time and over time - which is the key thing here and very important to distinguish.   Very popular does not equal meeting expectations.

 

The announcement that sales didn’t meet expectations, can be in the context of a given point in time after the game/s go/went on sale.  The company president will have made commitments to shareholders about what commercial results might have been to the end of a certain fiscal period, based on what may have been an internal agreement to fund the project’s development based on what it forecast/promised to sell by the same time (which based on the reporting of not meeting expectations, wasn’t met).

[SozzlyJoe]

This has all the hallmarks of something sent to die. Yet all the motions were went through talking of 'roadmaps' and 'seasons'. Surely they knew that was a hell of a long shot - did they sit there in meetings and discuss upcoming seasons with a straight face (or perhaps with eyes guiltily darting about). Best interpretation are that they were just being super optimistic. The worst is that they knew it was going to flop but still talked it up to rope in as many suckers as possible before the inevitable.

 

[RubberJohnny]

https://www.techradar.com/uk/news/square-enixs-latest-rpg-falls-below-10-players-on-steam

 

It's dead, Jim.

[Qazimod]

Yikes.

 

I think I liked it better during the three years of radio silence - at least you could still be excited for a nebulous unknown thing.

[Mr. Gerbik]

Babylon's fallen and can't get up

[Radish]

Quote

As of press time, a paltry 93 people were playing, and it’s attracted an average concurrent player count of only 149 across the last 30 days.

Not quite as exciting as the headline. 
 

I’m glad this has bombed though, it just came across as incredibly greedy. Especially being so expensive on PC - fingers crossed Forspoken has a similar reception. 

[moosegrinder]

30% off on Steam at the moment. A bargainous £41.99 

[Benny]

On 27/06/2021 at 12:40, Opinionated Ham Scarecrow said:

This will be massive.

 

ly disappointing.

[Keyboard Koala]

Platinum's Fall amirite?

[Captain Kelsten]

Shutting down Feb 2023

[Qazimod]

Oof, they're not even going for a last-ditch F2P rebrand... although I guess right now it's eating time, money and resources as it is, so it's probably better to let it die.

[Kayin Amoh]

Let it Die's a very good F2P, incidentally. 

[Qazimod]

Excess stock in US stores being binned, given away:

 

 

[deerokus]

I had completely forgotten about the existence of this.