Kingdoms of Amalur: One Game Can’t Save The Economy

SegmentNext - "Mainstream media is fond of pointing out that the video game industry pulls in more money than the movie industry. This factoid is true, but most of that money goes to game publishers based on the West Coast.

There are some major game publishers and developers on the East Coast too, including Rockstar in New York and Bethesda in Maryland, and it’s easy to see how other state governments would be eager to get a piece of this lucrative pie. That’s why Rhode Island was so keen to offer a 75 million dollar loan to a new game developer called 38 Studios for their very first game, Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning.

Today, only three months after the launch of that title, the studio has folded, leaving Rhode Island in an embarrassing predicament".

[tallkidoPL]

Many wouldnt proably hear about this game if not for the me3 armor u got for playing the demo.

[--Onilink--]

the game did sold over a million copies, its not at all like it failed, there was just very poor financial management in that company.

I mean, for a new company, making a new IP, at the end of this generation, and expect to sell 3mill copies just to cover the expenses??? most games dont even reach a million and not considered failures...

[Son_Lee]

Combat was the only thing good about this game. The world, lore, story, and characters were very poorly done and just a bore.

[Canary]

Their problem was that they invested WAAAAY too much money (and effort) into trying to launch a new MMO. Reckoning turned a profit... so they'd have been doing great had they simply wanted to make a kick-ass RPG.

But, no: they wanted to kill World of Warcraft.

So they molded Reckoning into a massive advertisement for an MMO no one wanted, and spent a ton of money developing the MMO no one wanted, and folded before they could even release the MMO no one wanted.

It was an inane strategy from day 1. I remember face-palming almost constantly every time they brought up their plans for the Amalur franchise in all those interviews prior to Reckoning's release.

It was just so... very... very... stupid.

[rdgneoz3]

Yep, KOA turned a profit, though a small profit to start. Its that they put basically all of the loan into the MMO and didn't have any results for it. They even canceled the E3 presentation this year, a several weeks or months ago.

Its too hard to make money in the MMO market. Look at star wars. It came out, had a bunch of people playing, then they lost subscribers and are merging servers. Offering people a free month to come back.

[ChunkyLover53]

This is the sad state of the industry right now. People think selling a million or even two million copies of a game is a success. Take into account all of the consoles out in the world and how much money it costs to develop a game and advertise it.

Most games need to sell at least 3 million copies to break even. This is why some companies go with a third party exclusivity deal, like Gears Of War does. Microsoft covers all advertising portions of the game franchise.

This is also why so many companies aren't taking risks and why we see so many sequels and proven franchises.

[Derpy]

It's a shame as KoA was one of the best CRPGs I've played in a long time. Though I also like Skyrim, Kingdoms was better because it had much more varied and interesting side quests than Skyrim. The different faction stories were far more interesting than Skyrim's as well.

The two addons that came out for it were real extensions to the game, something I have not seen in an RPG since Morrowind. The Dead Kel addon alone took me nearly twenty hours to complete.

Sadly a lot of gamers didn't give this game a chance. Anyone calling it generic or saying it was all combat and nothing else has probably not played beyond the demo as it's clear they don't know what they are talking about.

This is a real lost to those of use who crave good single player RPGs as we've now lost one more company that is interested in creating these kind of games.