Market/business performance of Senua's Saga: Hellblade 2 *spawn
- Thread starter XboxKING
- Start date
In terms of the essence of the topic, it almost doesn't matter, since we are talking about subscriptions in the millions anyway. The bottom line is how each game affects GP subscriptions and only MS can know that. We can only know so much if the outstanding successes are announced from time to time. But even a small, unspoken success can be a success from a business point of view.
But most likely is, a few hundred of thousands of Subscriptions (which is an ideal scenario that I don't see being a reality, and it will also include even someone who just joined for a month) cannot mathematically recuperate enough for a multimillion project to break even
It could even be MS is measuring success in terms of how many GP subs they get, and they could be operating it as a loss leader. Way too many unknowns to make this a meaningful discussion. Game threads are best kept for talking about the game. When there's some real sales data on Hellblade 2, discuss it in the MS business thread or the Sales Anecdotes thread or whatever is the best focus for what you think that information means.
cheapchips
Veteran
New subs is only one measure. A game like HB2 should be driving user hours. Engagement is key and all that subs service guff.
It's a showcase title. One that gets people in the door, and it's up to the rest of the library to keep them there. That's why I said earlier that it's really too early to judge the game's success. We'd have to have access to GP subscriber numbers, along with digital sales numbers (since the game has no physical release yet), and see how many people stay subscribed after the 2 week trial expires. I doubt we ever get these numbers from official sources. The closest we will get will be number of people of played the game, and maybe a "record increase in GP subscriptions" type statement in a financial disclosure.
Actually all games receive invalid and valid criticisms in all threads. For example a quick visit in Forbidden West has more negative criticisms for it's gameplay and visuals than HB2. To be honest I find your interpretations of other people's posts as "hating" in bad taste.
Regarding Hell Blade 2, I see nothing of the sorts. Almost all opinions on this thread regarding the game itself, were from people who played it, the majority who liked it with only a few pointing some things that look off like the post processing effects that isn't everyone's cup of tea, or due to how highly realistic the game looks, some imperfect elements stick out more due to the uncanny valley effect. Very valid observations. Personally I commented on how great it looks and justified the visual inconsistencies.
Regarding the article I posted, it had nothing to do with shitting on the game, but a valid concern how such amazing projects that deserves every penny, may be sabotaged, not because of quality, but because MS's business model isnt doing them a favor, thus all the hard work may go wasted. Similar to how HiFi Rush was also such an amazing game, MS praised it, people praised it, MS said it needs more games like it, but then closed the studio and along gamers lost its sequel.
As I am also involved in the industry seeing such hard work and quality work not receiving the appropriate revenue back is a sad story for the people who worked on it.
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Posting in a different thread about game business would have presented the info very differently to how it was taken here. It also didn't help that you lead with a conclusion without the source, and the source was not very relevant to that conclusion. I agree that game threads should be about games mostly and the extras derived from those games discussed elsewhere. eg. Helldivers 2 sales makes sense in HD2 thread, but to discuss impact on games, that wants a different thread like "AAA Model Under Threat".
I don’t think this is true in any sort. It’s a game, that has a subject matter that is very far removed from mainstream tastes. This isn’t some sort of power fantasy story here, it’s a look at a life of a person going through mental health issues, and they did marketed the game as being as true to nature as they could get within a fantasy story.
Quite frankly that was going to kill the game right out the gates. You have the majority of younger players playing UGC, f2p, and live service games who don’t care about graphics, and then you have the older 35+ crowd that while they do care, quite frankly people are probably turned off the subject matter. People want to play games to relax, have fun. I’m not seeing a lot of fun in this title; you have to be willing to want to go through the psychological abuse that Senua goes through to see the end of the story.
we have tons of nominated sad (and frustrating) films that never crack much at the box office, but bottom barrel marvel films crush it. It’s not a game distribution model problem. This game was never designed to hit the masses.
How many of you went out to watch Killers Under A flower Moon in the box office? Right. But how many would be willing to watch it on streaming. It’s hard story to watch. It was never going to do better than Barbie.
You will have a valid point if CoD flops where it has a history of very successful sales and player engagement. But being first party doesn’t make it a must play title.
I’ve seen this type of POV make constant circles, and it’s a bit weird that people hold onto this notion repeatedly to anchor their arguments around.
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Actually that's an additional argument in support to what I m saying. Games like this need all the financial support because they don't hit the mainstream. Offering it at a discounted price day 1 or an almost free alternative on top of the fact that it is no COD it further puts the project in danger. But the comparison with Fortnite and CoD is not a good one, because anyways very few games have that extraordinary appeal. Yet we do get other genres and success stories even if they don't hit extremely high sales. I also disagree that the game is as niche as the comparisons you are making with films.
It’s the opposite. No amount of financial support was going to make this better except to change the entire concept of the game entirely. Can we not look over to TLOU2 and see similar backlash when people found out what the game was about? An incredible game mind you, but most people tuned out in comparison to the first.
People talk about game backlogs all the time. Company after company, platform after platform has cited repeatedly that forever titles, live service titles, gobble up all the time and revenue of the game industry. And this is why, despite Sony being the console industry leader by a massive margin of 4:1 continues to follow in MS footsteps. Microsoft, which everyone professes here is on their last breaths of being a platform cannot have any control over what Sony does, yet they are arriving to the same conclusions about how live service titles has completely changed the industry. How nonsensical! Unless there is something seriously wrong with the traditional model actually still working in today’s market, why would Sony do this?
Sure, the industry is growing in revenue, but that revenue just goes back to the same handful of titles. Exclusives are nothing more than just a way to entice players to their platform, the majority of the revenue is still going to the live service titles that run perfectly fine on last generation hardware. Which, I mean, confuses me that Sony would release a pro model, but I digress, hardware enthusiasts believe this will somehow make the younger Minecraft and Roblox audience care.
Unless that changes, these types of titles have no chance at success. At least with game pass they may find their audiences
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It's pretty niche. Killers Under A flower Moon is a pretty fair comparison, because that's a film with a budget and production that isn't meant to appeal to everyone, but will likely get nominated for a bunch of awards.
Well again as I said, if the game is considered doomed at arrival financially due to being "niche", (even though I still disagree with the notion that only games like COD, Fortnite and GaaS can exist. Even when comparing these extreme successes with games from the same genre, they are still outliers within then), then MS didn't believe in it, so why bother? And again discounts on day 1 and offering it for free ensures even more it is dead on arrival.
Not really sure what the argument here is. In the film industry there are films that studios put out knowing they'll lose money because they have the chance to win awards. They're becoming more and more rare. Sometimes they're called things like "Prestige films." Doesn't mean the studio doesn't believe in them. It's the opposite. We also don't really know what Hellblade 2 cost to make. It's a very small studio from what I've read. Describing it as dead on arrival seems a bit odd, because we don't know what the expectations for it were. My only big issue is the marketing campaign seemed pretty weak from my end, but to be honest there's been so much discussion of the game online that maybe that wasn't a bad choice. The game seemed to market itself for better or worse.
First party titles are a platform play. Gamepass is a platform play. They are meant to drive people to look at the platform and want to enter the ecosystem. They build variety titles to get people to choose your platform versus their competition. They aren't meant to be massive revenue drivers, especially in this day of age. No one wants to sign up for a service that only has Marvel and Starwars, if every platform has Marvel and Starwars. You need diversity in gaming, but you don't need them to be platinum gold hits. It would be nice, but it's just not likely for a game like this.
You want to spend some time to explain why TLOU2 sold 50% of TLOU1 remastered? Or why in total sales sold 44% less than TLOU1. Just think on that for a while. It's not a SJW issue, it's not a political issue. The game has been out for so long now, people have had more than enough time to go out there forget about that and try it on their own, especially when these titles can be streamed on PSN premium.
Our generation will be the oldest gamign generation there is. But our generation is now largely between 40-50. this is where most of us who are in the working class will make the largest jump in salary, as older people age out, we are promoted into higher positions with more money. We use that time for our families and to try to make due in this crazy expensive world. Our generation of gamers is dwindling. We no longer represent the majority of gamers, we just represent the group of gamers with the most spending money. The gamers with the most time are playing f2p games, and if they have money, they spend it there. There's not this massive group of players sitting aroudn with both time and money to play all of these titles that are coming out. Everyone has to pick and choose.
The argument here is that Nesh believes gamepass killed this title. I mean, there are so many other factors to look at other than distribution. I'm just trying to get Nesh to see that he's falling into a trap of confirmation bias here and seeing a correlation that likely doesn't exist.
You are making a lot of assumptions with some creating thinking and data mining to support a theory. TLOU2 still sold very well even though it received too much negative feedback and controversy due to it's story and sold less. Games of multiple genres have examples of failure and examples of success. Some bring no profits and some do. Some bring extremely high profits some dont. These examples cover all kinds of genres. Resident Evil for example managed to regenerate it's sales. All latest Resident Evil entries sold extremely well. There are many examples of games that profit and don't fall in the category you claim they are.
I'm not saying money can't be made. A genre doesn't make a game niche. The content does. Find me a title that (deals with psychosis, and is marketed as a game where the main character suffers from psychosis, reviewed to be constantly have people talking to you) is more niche than HB2 and tell me how it sold.
But before we even get into that discussion. How did it actually review? And did any review of the game paint the picture that the game doesn't reach it's potential because of game pass? Or because the game is not that well reviewed? If the game reviewed as 10/10 i'm certain there would be significantly more sales and buzz around this title.
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Why does psychosis make a game niche?
TLOU2 also had PTSD, realistic homosexual (if not also gender fluid) and heterosexual sex or intimate themes. They spent $200m on what you might want to call "niche".
HB2's gameplay involves a female warrior welding a sword, hacking and slashing in an ancient world and solving puzzles. That's pretty common. Reviews aren't involved with financials. Reviews are involved with the quality of the game and the quality is great with an 81% in metacritic and Godly visuals. Everyone I asked including me, do not consider this type of game a niche. It's psychosis theme for us is an interesting tone and perhaps an additional selling point for a game that we are interested in. A story driven hack and slash. It reminds me of GoWs free Valhala DLC which involved a navigation of Kratos' guilt and dark past haunting him. That's exactly the game I want and I typically play. It's what I experienced also from the original which for me falls in the GoW genre.