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Valderen

Valderen

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Yeah, the Overwatch cast was diverse but all of them were likeable and the diversity wasn't shoved down your throat. It's an international organization with members from all over the world so it made sense, and the cinematic to introduce them were amazing and made the characters even more interesting.

Concord characters are all unappealing, and the game is like 6 years to late to capitalized on Overwatch's success anyways.
 
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Nija

Nija

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Aborting this 2 weeks after birth. Democrats through and through.
 
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Araxen

Araxen

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Valderen said:
Yeah, the Overwatch cast was diverse but all of them were likeable and the diversity wasn't shoved down your throat. It's an international organization with members from all over the world so it made sense, and the cinematic to introduce them were amazing and made the characters even more interesting.

Concord characters are all unappealing, and the game is like 6 years to late to capitalized on Overwatch's success anyways.
Click to expand...

Another thing is the gameplay isn't even like Overwatch. It's an Arena shooter which is a dead genre for the most part.
 
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Mist

Mist

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Noodleface said:
For all its faults, at least overwatch was good when it was good. A nice diverse cast without forcing DEI and pronouns down your throat. They fucked that game up so bad.

How could this company think they could compare with overwatch though ..
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OW started the marketing really early. They put a lot of "character" into the character designs. The trailers showed off the characters attitudes, personalities, etc, including gestures, facial expressions, etc. You felt like you knew something about the characters before the game ever launched.

These other games? "IDK, let's just throw some shit out there and hope someone gloms onto it." Minimal effort gets minimal sales, weird.

Everyone hates to admit it, but brand strategy/marketing is everything except in very rare cases where something is just so unbelievably good that it rises above the fray.
 
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Cybsled

Cybsled

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Captain Suave said:
They had No Man's Sky on that list in 2021? Yes, it critically flopped initially but still had great sales numbers. And as we all know they've had a storybook redemption arc. Hello Games has been pretty consistently making $30M profit a year while not even charging for their DLC work. It's a fucking resounding success in the long view.
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No Man’s Sky was an initial flop, but made a complete 180. Technically Final Fantasy 14 1.0 should be on that list as well - it took a complete reboot with A Realm Reborn to salvage that game
Araxen said:
Another thing is the gameplay isn't even like Overwatch. It's an Arena shooter which is a dead genre for the most part.
Click to expand...

This as well - if this game had released 6+ years ago it might have done okayish, but it’s a tired game genre in a crowded market and never really differentiated itself outside of unappealing character designs. They couldn’t even organically get rule34 or SFM/Blender porn support from the internet to get a cult following
 
Mist

Mist

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Valderen said:
Yeah, the Overwatch cast was diverse but all of them were likeable and the diversity wasn't shoved down your throat.
Click to expand...
I remember people being very butthurt about Zarya early on, when she was revealed as the first "heavy" class.
 
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Mist

Mist

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Cybsled said:
No Man’s Sky was an initial flop, but made a complete 180. Technically Final Fantasy 14 1.0 should be on that list as well - it took a complete reboot with A Realm Reborn to salvage that game


This as well - if this game had released 6+ years ago it might have done okayish, but it’s a tired game genre in a crowded market and never really differentiated itself outside of unappealing character designs. They couldn’t even organically get rule34 or SFM/Blender porn support from the internet to get a cult following
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EVE Online was also a huge flop on launch, before the publisher (Simon & Schuster) abandoned it, CCP went to self-publishing, and it got retooled into the game CCP wanted to make originally. (UO in SPACE.)
 
Cybsled

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True, I guess I am conflating critical flop with financial with it

New World sold a fuckton of copies and had close to 1,000,000 concurrent players, now it struggles to maintain 5k during prime time and usually is much lower. So you could argue that while it was an initial success, long term the game flopped
 
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spronk

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1725402453847.png


Cracking Up Lol GIF



seriously that is nightmare fuel
 
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Gavinmad

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Shmoopy said:
Money spent vs outcome, Concord has got to be the biggest bomb in gaming history? I've seen various lists of bombs but nothing comes this close?

Possibly adjusted for inflation the ET Atari game.

www.ranker.com

The 14 Biggest Flops In Video Game History

The video game industry is one of the most profitable fields in the world, with franchises like all the Mario games and Grand Theft Auto. But even the best farms tend to yield bad crops once in a while, and the game industry is no exception. Now, these aren't just video games with terrible...
www.ranker.com www.ranker.com
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Even adjusted for inflation there's no fucking way ET lost 536 million dollars. That's basically taking every single unsold/returned copy and claiming you lost 50 bucks on each one of them.
 
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Cybsled

Cybsled

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Atari games were expensive back then (I remember shitty Atari 5200 games selling for like $80 at Service Merchandise), but the math doesn't make sense there unless they're adjusting for inflation and like you said they were counting the retail box price as the loss. According to the wiki article, Atari spent $22 million for the rights and had like 3,500,000 unsold games or so. If they were $50 each, that means 175 million. But if you roughly adjusted for inflation, you're looking at 525 million retail box price which is closer to that number.
 
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Caliane

Caliane

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no idea where they are getting that number.

atari 2600 games were around 12-35$. heres a 1982 sears catalog. The empire strikes back was 30$. im sure E.T. was about that as well. sure production on carts were expensive. if the cheap games were 12. then those also must be profitable though. so, no more then 8$ in production per unit. shipping, returns.. 3.5 million returns/unsold at $50 loss per? 175m. x3.3 inflation.= 570m. Claiming 30-50$ loss for unsold or returned is just silly though.

forums.atariage.com

Sears Holiday Wish Catalog 1982

Hey guys, Took the time to scan the video game section of the Sears 1982 Wish Catalog I figure we can all relive those days gone by when we'd sit down with a red pen, drool over all the great new video games and circle what we wanted for Xmas. Good stuff!!
forums.atariage.com forums.atariage.com
 
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C

Captain Suave

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Caliane said:
no idea where they are getting that number.

atari 2600 games were around 12-35$. heres a 1982 sears catalog. The empire strikes back was 30$. im sure E.T. was about that as well. sure production on carts were expensive. if the cheap games were 12. then those also must be profitable though. so, no more then 8$ in production per unit. shipping, returns.. 3.5 million returns/unsold at $50 loss per? 175m. x3.3 inflation.= 570m. Claiming 30-50$ loss for unsold or returned is just silly though.

forums.atariage.com

Sears Holiday Wish Catalog 1982

Hey guys, Took the time to scan the video game section of the Sears 1982 Wish Catalog I figure we can all relive those days gone by when we'd sit down with a red pen, drool over all the great new video games and circle what we wanted for Xmas. Good stuff!!
forums.atariage.com forums.atariage.com
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The numbers looked like bullshit to me, too, so I did some googling. According to some sources I saw ET did sell for $50 at release. As you say, though, unsold stock does not get assigned a loss based on its MSRP (I just lost a trillion dollars by not selling my toenail clippings!). It's a mess not even worth unscrambling.
 
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Cybsled

Cybsled

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It's basically "game piracy" math - they count every pirated game as a lost sale, but the reality is the majority of those people were never going to buy the game to begin with
 
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mkopec

mkopec

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Captain Suave said:
I paid $80 for FFIII on release. That's fucking $170 today. Games keep getting cheaper.
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My therory is because of more saturation. Games back then were more niche. Today they are pretty much in every home. Best selling Atari 2600 game was Pac Man with 8.5 million.
We now have games selling in the hundreds of millions.
 
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