Developers - It's Your Fault The Game Bombed, Not Ours

NowGamer Opinion: Game sales are in the drain, and developers have only themselves to blame.

[Knightofelemia]

Thing about gaming this generation is sequals after sequals coming out fast. Or they take a solid franchise and make a couple of tweaks that look good to them and pump the game out. And now that franchise has left a bad taste in a persons mouth. The originality for these games are not there any more its all about pumping the game the DLC out and making a quick buck. Tomb Raider is a great example of taking a solid franchise and breaking it apart and rebuilding it from the ground up and doing it right.I remember from Sega Master system days to PS2 days there was orginality and sequals weren't pumped out as fast as they are today. It would be two to three years before a sequal even came out. So yes I say it is devlopers fault and the publishers fault pumping out the game to make the coin. If you don't test a game you end up with a train wreck like the new Sim City game or like Black Ops 2. I know one thing I don't like playing a train wreck I like a quality well built game with orginality. Another thing that takes away from orginality and new Ips thats publishers faults and developers fault is relying too much on a cash cow title taking teams away from other titles to work on the cash cows. And then the title I am waiting for is pushed back.

[telekineticmantis]

who told me DMC was better than God o War Ascension need to take some responsibility. I bought DMC it was a boring nightmare, and GOW:A gets better and better the more I play it. If I knew nothing about either of these franchises and went by the score, I would of chose DMC over GOW, and I wold of been pissed if I couldn't afford to trade in ad replace it, with GOW.

[jc48573]

If Ninja Theory was asked to do something "different," then they really did it wrong. The problem with DmC is that it felt like your generic hack n slash very similar to that of Heavenly Sword. Look, when you are given a project, you have to show off something "better" than the previous games and even the projects that you have done in the past. DmC is by all means a step backward. Sacrificing gameplay just for a slightly better story? Honestly, story wasn't all that impressive.

I also want to give a big slap to critics who have been praising this game because they think this is what we want. They go on talking about how "accessible" it is as if they've suffered enough with hard games and that more people want easy games. Dude, don't underestimate humans! We can handle ourselves pretty well.

[Gamer-Z]

To be honest i think some of these reviewers are not even real gamers or they never bothered playing the older games in order to compare the original source materiel to the new stuff to make a fair comparison.

[Root]

It's like none of them played a dmc game before

The thing I found odd though is that the majority of the big site reviews ended up focusing on selling you the end instead of reviewing it and also wasted half their review on saying how the "haters" were wrong.

Most reviews even ended up sounding the same, which to me seemed like they were planned, like Capcom were telling them a list of things to say.

Lets not forget all of a sudden, one month before it came out, big name sites started to defend the game out of nowhere. 2 years people complained and hardly none of the sites got involved or jumped in to defend it then all of a sudden a month before launch they end up defending it.....sorry but I don't bite.

[OmegaSlayer]

You're on the point.
Reviewers should buy the games, first and foremost, they would make them more aware of the consumers' needs.

[DEATHxTHExKIDx]

Im not bored of my 360/PS3...

[tweet75]

im glad it bombed i can get a great game in a month or so for $20. Moneys tight now. I cant afford to pay $60 for one game.

[00]

Maybe the shouldn't insult the people who are to buy there games.

[BigStef71]

I'm just curious the article says Ascension bombed. How is selling over 400k in the first week in the US alone considered a flop? What do people honestly expect it to sell better than the main entries? There's no way considering how much hype there was going for GOW3 and it's so late in the console life cycle. It will still sell 2-3 million units in its lifetime. GOW4 or a reboot of the series on ps4 will get the huge numbers no doubt

[Garrison]

God of War is amazing but I don't really even remember any GoW fan even asking for more GoW. The story was done with, why keep pumping out more? Sure it's a great game but what the author was trying to say is that people want more original games right now. It will still sell well no doubt.
Mark my words thou, The last of Us will sell amazing when that game drops. Naughty dog could of easily pumped out another uncharted but they did the right thing. They were smart.

[BigStef71]

I'm all in favor of new IPs and thankfully Sony is letting their devs do this instead of pumping out sequels constantly but people are acting like God of War is a milked franchise when this game is only the second new entry this gen. It's still probably one of the best next hack n' slashes on the market. The criticism the game got was definitely unnecessary and all the reviewers did was nitpick. So with that said I'm sure Sony Santa Monica will evolve the series next gen so people will stop complaining

[Ezz2013]

@BigStef71
it didn't flop ....who said that ?!

""""It does become the second biggest Week 1 in the series surpassing the debut week of God of War II which took the No1 back in Week 17 2007.""""

http://www.chart-track.co.u...

its the second biggest Week 1 in the series and that's very impressive for not a main title

EDIT : @below
this show little the so called gaming media know about gaming

[BigStef71]

In the article it said this:
"Many have pointed to relative sales flops like God Of War: Ascension, which managed less than half of God Of War III’s UK opening week sales – despite being on sale for four more days – as proof the current gen of consoles is dead and buried and gamers are just dying to fork out hundreds of pounds to move on to next-gen at long last."

[Garrison]

Most likely devs do come out with amazing ideas all the time only to be turned down by greedy publishers who's imagination is based on how to rip us off better.

I honestly don't get why is it so hard for some people to grasp the videogame medium. Hundreds of movies get made every year, with bigger budgets than games yet very few are made with the intention of a "summer blockbuster".

It's like the usual Game Publisher mentality is that if they make a Horror Game, let's say the equivalent of "the ring" but as a game, they make a sequel with multiplayer, a more casual friendly story, zombie mode and they invest even the kitchen sink on it.

Then your fav franchise just got killed.

[DJ]

Most people just buy Call of Duty and call it a day. Developers make good games. We just haven't been buying them.

[InTheLab]

That's just depressing. I hop on CoD and look at the leaderboards and my friends all have well over 10 days played while I'm sitting at 2 days.

Hell, I even loan then great games and they get a trophy/achievement or two and return it to me.

[IcyEyes]

Nowgamer is a so terrible website ...

[Unicron]

Disagree. It's everyone's fault and no ones at the same time. People complain about sequelitis, then ignore amazing new ips. There's no reason bayonetta should have sold so little, or vanquish, or okami. The devs made those amazing games... And they were mostly ignored.

[EverydayGuy]

Dmc was a terrific game...

https://www.youtube.com/wat...

[pbasson]

All i want to say is this. my personal belief is that publishers themselves are to blame. I mean think about it, know all the tech has evolved but how comes so many games these days come out that are broke and yet released (dont forget publishes know this). The way I see it there is 2 reasons for a shit game.
Either the devs are shit at their job or the publishers are interfering too much. I give an example, are you telling the whole gaming com at large that sega is innocent & gearbox are pricks for what happened to Aliens:CM, I think they knew that and still let it happen. I feel that we gamers are used as guinea pigs so that these asshole get our money and after 1000+ youtube videos of moaning do we get fixes.
lets put it simply I have yet to see crash bandicoot do something really random.
I think us gamers deserve more. You telling me all this tech advancement and we still cant do much more than PS2 days (except the graphics), and now we have to pay for this, I seem to see more DLC that lasts longer than games themselves.
My statement is to gamers that I believe that these fuckers (publishers) think they can make money on us while giving us nothing but useless shit (eg COD clone) that dont work (eg Simcity 2012).

[Williamson]

Hopefully this means we will get to listen to the wise cracking Dante soon. That Dante was quite amusing in dmc4.

[Tontus]

God of War: Ascension isn't a sales flop at all. What writers like Alex Evans forget is that only the first 2 days of sales in the UK for God of War: Ascension have been shared. It sold around 30,000 units in it's first 2 days which is bloody huge, especially for its genre. Also it didn't have an extra 4 days on sale compared to God of War III, both games launched on a Friday in the UK, I remember because I bought both games day one.

God of War: Ascension is on track to be the 2nd biggest game in the franchise. So far estimates are that its first week sales are 500,000-550,000 first week in the USA, 30,000 in Japan, and around 55,000 in the UK. That's already 585,000-635,000 units not including the rest of the world. It should sell between 700,000-800,000 first week which means it'll be the biggest single SKU launch at retail this year so far. It'll sell amazingly, especially for a poorly advertise prequel at the end of the generation. It'll be the biggest exclusive on consoles this year even beating Gears of War: Judgment.

[Npugz7]

Umm no your game sucks and the new Dante pretty much ruined your game... Morons!!!

[Max-Zorin]

Capcom need to give DMC to Platinum.

[Williamson]

Wow did the author just call gow ascension a flop in terms of sales? It just launched dude, and its guaranteed to sell 3 million+ worldwide.

[fsfsxii]

Man, DmC was a bad game, a very bad game, story sucks, gameplay is fun in the first 10 missions then it gets boring and easy, platforming sections are bad, dante is a generic "I don't give a fuck" type of a guy
vergil is a pussy compared to the true vergil
They had to reason to reboot it, then why???

[ATi_Elite]

I just think consolers are tired of the same CRAPPY games done over and over again with numbers behinds them.

The linear 8 hours shoot or hack this corny story with a Rushed MP mode has gotten OLD and these games are only worth RENTING if that.

time for new genres and innovation in console gaming.

Time to GO BIG or go away!

[lizard81288]

....Go indie games...

[hazelamy]

if they don't make the games people want to play, people won't buy them, simple as that

[Klonoa_Dream_Travel]

so basically https://www.youtube.com/wat...

[syphon32]

I liked reboot dmc, but it lacked something that the devil may cry series has always had.. and that's f$%#ing style. They style felt generic, the way dante can switch between play styles on the fly in dmc 4 that was a great improvement over dmc 3 . They should've played to their strengths. Dmc reboot could've been epic, all they had to do was 1. overhaul on the graphics, not so much that your not familiar with the main charaters, 2. epic story telling . 3. Improve upon, and tighten up the gameplay. They already had a good thing. Sometimes it's not smart to re invent the wheel.

[ShaunCameron]

If the people are not interested, no amount of quality or generous pricing is gonna change that.