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BusinessInsider: Amazon just launched a major video game, but it looks to already be a major flop
- Thread starter Theorry
- Start date
It's just not an exciting game by any metric. It doesn't seem particularly good, it doesn't seem particularly fresh or original, and it doesn't seem like it's being marketed particularly well. There are games that tick all of these boxes, even within a similar genre (like Volarant), that are out right now, so why would anyone be excited to play this game?
I have no idea what budgets and stuff, but it's hard to believe this thing cost 300 million to make and they did like zero real marketing or anything. I don't remember there being in like preview impressions or anything
A game like this really needs to be very good to have a chance against stuff like Overwatch, Apex Legends, or Valorant. Just such a competitive space for game success they went after.
If Amazon games aren't exclusive to streaming like Google I don't mind them...
They took millions to make, but they sure as hell didn't take 300 of them. RDR2 was probably the most expensive and it is ballparked at around 80-110 million to produce.
We'll never know the exact production cost for these big games, but there's zero chance Amazon spent $300m on this one single game. If they did then they're so far beyond idiotic and wasteful that I wouldn't even know where to begin.
Just to put it in perspective, Avengers: Endgame took about $350m or so to produce.
So far haha. I do think their MMO has a decent chance of doing well but otherwise this whole initiative seems like a mess (remember their cancelled game that was in beta?). I don't know of any other large project besides Star Citizen that's taken on Lumberyard either (another avenue to push AWS). I can see the logic in that there's a lot of money to be made if the game industry takes up AWS at large, but I don't know if this is the best way to advertise it. Time will tell.
Yeah, you need Quality and Timing. A lot of good games just die because they come in late or the rare two early.
I don't get it.
Why not start with a smaller AA game then expand with bigger games later on? Establish a fanbase first. It also doesn't help the game isn't anything new to attract people and make them try it rather than keep playing what they know is great.
Why not start with a smaller AA game then expand with bigger games later on? Establish a fanbase first. It also doesn't help the game isn't anything new to attract people and make them try it rather than keep playing what they know is great.
It might well be a flop but if you've been actually looking at the industry over the last couples years the first few months of major online games is not enough to determine the overall success. They get retooled, some Twitch personality picks it up, it gets a new advertising campaign etc.
I think Amazon probably should have jsut started with "make a good game" before they tried to buy streamers lol. Riot's strategy with Valorant wouldn't have worked if the game wasn't good.
Instant success? Does anyone actually play the free Twitch Prime games?
I feel like you need even more than that, unless the game is coming from an established publisher or studio with massive hype or advertising campaign then you have no chance. You have to have a ton luck or play the long game, and start of as a niche and then grow from there(but then publishers don't generally have the patience for that).
The game itself is average. It's one of the most "eh, it's fine" games released in the past year or so. My biggest complaint (aside from bugs) is that it just feels so slow. The combat feels slow, the traversal feels slow, the matches feel slow... and not even in a "We need to be very tactical and careful and plan everything out before the attack" sort of slow, but the "I feel like my character is moving at half the speed it should be" kind of slow lol
It felt like there was zero marketing push behind this game, aside from the trailer and a few people who wrote preview and really rushed reviews for it. I don't know if COVID made review events hard to run or what. No matter what the constraints were, it just looked as if Amazon didn't want to push their own game.
Valorant & Apex (and even the Overwatch anniversary event) also have been dominating the adjacent news and social discussions recently so that doesn't help either.
Maybe calling it an Open Beta would've been better so they could spend big on the 1.0 / Full Release campaign. I don't know.
Valorant & Apex (and even the Overwatch anniversary event) also have been dominating the adjacent news and social discussions recently so that doesn't help either.
Maybe calling it an Open Beta would've been better so they could spend big on the 1.0 / Full Release campaign. I don't know.
That I can believe. They paid $50 -70 million for CryEngine and have spent the last 5 years working on the engine so yeah that lines up about right.
I think this is the nail in the coffin for Amazon Game studios. That division has not had a single success since it's inception. I wonder how long they'll keep it going before pulling the plug?
rdr2, gta5 & tlou definately cost more than 300m combined. Crucible is probably about right around 20-30m, and at least their marketing spend seems to have been zero.
rdr2 was $100m to develop, 100m again in marketing. gta5 was 150m to develop, maybe double again in marketing. tlou was probably much cheaper in comparison.
edit: GTA5 was 265m all in, dev & marketing. Excluding marketing i'd struggle to guess if it's over or under 300m for all 3 - probably pretty close.
Destiny under activision was given 50m/yr with a 10yr contract to develop and market a live service game, which seems about right for something at its ambition level.
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It looks like getting all of those "Crucible Partner" on Twitch such as LIRIK and so on didn't do much for them. I guess they were heavily relying on streamer showcasing the game converting into players joining / trying out the game, which didn't happen at all.
Michael Pachter on Twitter
“@YangCLiu @ballmatthew I suppose if you throw in all Lumberyard engine costs, maybe. The studio was formed 2015, so four years is probably right. We thought 200 developers and around $100 million, but you’re closer to the information flow than me. That’s why Unity and UE5 make sense”
twitter.com
Just where I read that from if you wanted more context, good ol' Pach
Maybe cos it's big bucks?
People laughed at Riot for chasing a shooter and that became a massive success even before it's launched.
Crucible just isn't getting good reviews and doesn't have a hook, that's its problem, not that it's a multiplayer shooter.
Thanks for the information. Man, they have a long way to go with Lumberyard.Michael Pachter on Twitter
“@YangCLiu @ballmatthew I suppose if you throw in all Lumberyard engine costs, maybe. The studio was formed 2015, so four years is probably right. We thought 200 developers and around $100 million, but you’re closer to the information flow than me. That’s why Unity and UE5 make sense”
Just where I read that from if you wanted more context, good ol' Pach
This, especially if there only goal is to milk the market more rather then actually deliver content people want. Stop designing games and services only goal being to create maximum shareholder value using buzzwords of what they think we want just to be a part of the gaming industry.
But Riot isn't exactly a small name in gaming. They leveraged their talent and their brand to make and market Valorant. Amazon is not a gaming brand, at all.
You don't necessarily have to be a huge name to make a big hit (although it certainly helps).
PUBG was successful without a huge name behind it.
Epic didn't really have a big name among the public and Fortnite still became huge.
OOF a 4 from IGN? Must be pretty bad. I like the little foxy guy hopping around at least.
Yeah, I just meant the development, although I admit that I didn't specify. Including the marketing you're totally right that it would blow out well over $300m. RDR2 is estimated between $80-$100m, GTAV is estimated somewhere over $137m and TLOU likely wouldn't touch either of those being that they are like one seventh of the size of Rockstar (approx 300 staff compared to over 2000 staff). It's definitely approaching $300m, but I'd be surprised if it was above it.
That said, we're getting a bit sidetracked here- Crucible still didn't cost $300m! :P
True, but PUBG wasn't an immediate hit. It took a while. It was also one of the earliest BR games.
Fortnite BR was a surprise for everyone, including Epic. Before that it (meaning the save the world component) was mostly used as tech demo for unreal engine.
Those games were able to capitalize on a brand new genre just after its infancy, when people wanted something with more polish and better production.
Crucible is arriving very late to the multiplayer shooter genre and not offering anything new, or better, than what's out there in the dozens if not hundreds of other games.
First thing I thought about when I say the footage. Gigantic looked and played way better. Shame.
The "multiplayer shooter genre" isn't a monolith lol.
PUBG and Fortnite are also multiplayer shooters, they just innovated on the base concept. R6:S is a multiplayer shooter, Overwatch is a multiplayer shooter.
There's plenty of room to try new things in MP shooters, it's just that sometimes a company just fails to make something that stands out enough or ends up copying a bit too much. Doesn't mean they shouldn't try.
The game launched with ZERO protections for rage-quitting. My first two hours of play were cursed with uneven teams and no auto-fill systems. One of my matches *began* with the teams being imbalanced, a 3v5 match. I then went on Twitch and watched people quit their matches within the first two minutes if something went wrong, with zero indication of punishment to come.
20-25 minute 4v4 matches don't work if ragequitting is a penalty-free option. Which is harder for a brand-new F2P game, because even if ragequitters were penalized, they might just quit and never come back. But where does that leave anyone willing to commit to the game's early state? I felt punished for giving a shit in the game's launch week. No rewards, no incentive, no sense of "hang through this rough patch and we'll take care of you as an early, committed player."
20-25 minute 4v4 matches don't work if ragequitting is a penalty-free option. Which is harder for a brand-new F2P game, because even if ragequitters were penalized, they might just quit and never come back. But where does that leave anyone willing to commit to the game's early state? I felt punished for giving a shit in the game's launch week. No rewards, no incentive, no sense of "hang through this rough patch and we'll take care of you as an early, committed player."
I thought it was a neat concept but it really didn't do much to set itself apart, and in the hero shooter genre you either have that hook right off the bat or your game basically disappears.
I did think it was really strange that Amazon Studios would launch this as a flagship title, and for one of their first as well.
I did think it was really strange that Amazon Studios would launch this as a flagship title, and for one of their first as well.
Breakaway: Dead
Cruicible: Flopping
New World: Completely reworked after alpha and now a full paid game more more of a PvE focus.
It will be interesting if they can manage to turn Crucible around and how New World is received.
Cruicible: Flopping
New World: Completely reworked after alpha and now a full paid game more more of a PvE focus.
It will be interesting if they can manage to turn Crucible around and how New World is received.
No way The New World doesn't at least come out. If that fails then sure.