I think I read somewhere that Sony put $50 million into their marketing - more than likely for a significant cut of revenue on top of their platform fee for the PS4. Combine that with the 30% cut Steam takes on PC they probably have to charge $60 to have a decent chunk of profit leftover for themselves.
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Ah. I donāt find the negative reviews surprising, given your own take on it which I agree with.
Itās $60. Most people seem to feel it should be $30, or even less.
It seems the price is 100% purely āthis game is super hyped and people will pay $60 based on the hype aloneā. Which is very sad and scummy.
There is an argument to be made for pricing a niche game high since it seems there wonāt be a ton of purchases, but they hyped and marketed this with the vague and misleading psuedo-promises to try and get everyone to buy it instead of just a few niche people that want to repetitively explore different colored big balls.
Like I could see why Infinity: Battlescape would be $45 or $50 retail, because how many people want space battles like this compared to all the work put into making it? CoD might have a bigger budget, but it is tried and true gameplay and marketing that has tons of consumers for it.
But NMS is visually far less impressive, no network code, no servers, except for the naming stuff (which is broken), and just a repetitive mining and crafting grind mill.
For me, there is actually slightly more ārealā content than I expected, like the language learning and stuff. But the procedural gen stuff is a huge let down.
Itās also funny that you canāt actually experience most of what is in the trailer on the Steam page for the game, like wingmen and stuff. False advertising like that is a big part of the negative reviews.
If it actually had multiplayer, they could have said that wingman was another player and you could experience something like that, but nope.
And I donāt see how Sony spent $50mil. That sounds like a baseless rumor.
Yes he was on Colbert and Ellen, but isnāt that more to do with insider connections? I doubt it costs $10mil to get a guest to appear on Colbert so much as convincing the producers itāll be an interesting interview.
After all, guests are generally selling books and books donāt tend to have that huge of ad budgets.
And I havenāt seen commercials for it on TV, let alone on Hulu that had tons of Destiny, Overwatch, and other game adverts.
That isnāt really true?
People keep saying nonsense, saying that everyone is disappointed āhad a different game in their head that Sean never said would exist.ā Saying that they filled in the blanks themselves on things that were never said.
Thatās uh. Not true.
Sean said lots of things that werenāt delivered.
They showed supposed gameplay of you flying close to the ground, and combat with other ships around the terrain, thatās not in the game. They showed wingmen, which arenāt in the game. They showed massive fleet battles, also not in the game.
They said and showed lots of things that arenāt in the game. Things that made the game look or sound better. Apologists make up this lie saying people are only hating it because you canāt make a city or something, no, thatās a very tiny minority that got the crazy idea that theyād be able to make colonies. Most people are upset they didnāt get what they were actually told/shown theyād get.
Unless youāre trying to say they didnāt promise because he never said āI promise there will be multiplayerā, is that necessary? Thatās a huge cop-out.
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That Video of him confirming that there is multiplayer is pretty bad. They must have scrapped multiplayer pretty late into development, otherwise I canāt explain why he would lie about it that obviously. This makes them look real bad. They could at least told people before release that there will be no multiplayer. Who thought it would be a good idea to lie about it, the truth always comes out, that was just stupid.
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The vagueness of Seanās statements seems to imply that it might eventually have multiplayer and other promised features but they just donāt have the resources to have it at launch. As one of the devs stated, those people that met up were supposed to see each other. So either there is something broken or something missing that hasnāt been completed yet. Hence probably why they are claiming to have free DLC updates for the game.
Either way itās a bit of a cluster**** and yet another typical Sony release. They should have put half the $50 milliion for marketing towards paying some devs to finish and test the game properly. The fact that they had to hire extra QA prior to release is very telling.
The only consolation Iāll make is that they had to deal with that legal BS with the Sky TV channel lawsuit.
I didnāt know you were in Iraq. Guys better read the interview itās interesting
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After I unlocked the framerate in game my NVIDIA 980s are getting 60-80 FPS. Yes, with Gsync on. Only horrible bug I get is the drop to half speed after playing 2-3 hours.
This thread is interesting and pretty much confirms a few things:
- thereās no multiplayer ( no network traffic, no files refering multiplayer, game can be paused, players who go at same loc canāt see each other etcā¦ )
- shaders are stored in clear
- E3 demo was scripted
- engine seems to be a heavy mod of Unity
Iām disappointed.
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Itās not unreasonable, but Iād expect something more in the range of $20 million. Sony blew $400 million pushing the Angry Birds movie, $50 million for the Playstation Vita, and $31 million on TV spots for Playstation games in 2015.
The crying shame there is that $50 million would fund the development of quite a game - assuming they didnāt blow the whole budget on state of the art graphics.
Iām not. Sean made consistently vague and confusing statements about the product. I went entirely by the gameplay videos to understand the game - and thereās nothing there. Itās a single player simpleminded grind. Sean should be ostracized by the gaming world.
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please, be more specific
I have an āoldā 7850 and it works fine
Problem arises if you have older 6th series.
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Interesting link, thanks!
Well most of these things you listed wouldnāt disappoint me,
-
the shaders, wellā¦ that notā¦ ācleverā but well a regular player wouldnāt care,
-
most E3 demos of all kind of games for sure are scripted (my personal guess, however if that means a signifcant lack of features e.g. procedurally generated stuff, close to release, yeah that would suck, yesh)
-
remaining folders and assets and stuff seems to be an effect of rushing it out (or lacking of professionalism) however again a casual player wouldnt notice
-
a heavy moddified Unity engine raises my interest instead of condemning it, how / by which techniques they did some of the stuff they did for example. E.g. if they incorporated floating origin, scaled spaces etc., in case its not heavily modded. Guess lots might be done similar to KSP, the intro at least reminds me a lot of a prototype I built with Unity using some of the techniques from KSP. But, basically, nothing wrong with that Unity approach for me.
What indeed is a shame is the communication, especially on the multiplayer, as @innociv already stated and the youtube video nicely sums up. Combined with the bugs on PC, the worse optimization and some missing core elements (e.g. the need to manually delete files in case of a restart etc). I enjoy the game still, but totally understand every who gives them bad ratings due to that!
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The thing about multiplayer is that it was (in my eyes) a useless advertisement anyway. Itās basically a single player game even if there were to be other people in the same universe. Thereās no friends list or way of keeping track other players. Heck, the current ālogbookā for where youāve been is pretty barebone and thereās not really any way to go back to the stars youāve been to (at least that I know of except for manually finding all the stars and manually finding your way back which is just a ridiculous way to do it, why canāt I search for stars and set a waypoint there?). All that with the fact that the universe isā¦ well itās big, so meeting someone (randomly) is extremely low to begin with.
I think they could have just gone with: āItās not a multiplayer game, itās a singleplayer game. Weāre a small studio we canāt do everything yadayadayada.ā and that wouldnāt really have hurt anyone. Sure some might have felt a bit disappointed with not being able to meet other players but at least people wouldnāt have gone on a witch hunt like they did now.
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Not only that, but from what Iāve read, if you rename your discoveries, somebody else that comes to the same planet/system will override it ( even with the default auto naming, aka. without doing anything at all ). So renaming is completely useless and kills the little interest of the feature.
Well, disappointed-not disappointed. And the money he received and the glory, too, and enlisted the support of Sony and made a huge contribution to the game industry. So heās doing great. A lie itās great, because itās paid off.
-And the game teaches life routine, cyclical repetitions will lead to the desired goal.
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Given how many bugs there are it probably is a modified Engine. SCās modified CryEngine is the same thing and it has so many bugs it feels like a trip through the amazon. Not every game needs to be built from the ground up but clearly SC and NMS would have been better creating something that suited their needs. Fortunately Infinity started with a solid foundation with itās own Engine. And I just canāt help but shake my head at the $50 million being tossed around - imagine what Infinity could do with $50 million!!! lol. The gaming industry is shite: trying to toss out game after game with crap content on modified crap engines.
Keep up the good work DEVS! You have a ground breaking Engine that runs incredibly well and soon we will have gameplay. Ignore these Philistine gamers looking for the next quick fix.
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Which is unrealistic. The average Paradox or CDPR game goes for near enough the price they launched with, thereās no reason for HG to go lower.
Some of it was hype, some of it is payment for future updates that are supposedly going to be free.
HG never really hyped it. People kept asking to see the game and they showed it, they promised very little other than what they delivered, with the exception of multiplayer content. Sony has been responsible for a fair share of the overselling.
I agree I expected a lot more from the procgen, but I also really like how theyāve done the languages.
Iām not even sure thatās false though, because there seems to be a lot hidden behind the exploration and story parts of the game. Frankly itās not a big loss though, as the space combat is awful.
That doesnāt happen, true.
That can happen if you a) fight ships on the surface b) take a space fight to the surface
Iāve not seen this in game yet
Iāve seen fleets involved in battles, but not battling each other. It was never clear to me from the trailers that the latter was happening though.
Agreed
They also got flooded out a couple of years ago, but I canāt say how much that actually impacted development
Not that surprising really, nor necessarily bad. Thereās form for the Unity engine being used to make space games. Normal rules about heavy modding of engines not entirely suited for the application for which you are applying them applies here though, obviously.
Yes, because we know how throwing more money at a developer gets more features done quicker, right?
I donāt think thatās fair. There are far better developers that have done far worse things and not been ostracised (Molyneux Iām looking at you).
I do wonder why they never went down that path. It never made sense as a multiplayer game, and when they said it I always assumed they meant as in the same way as Spore rather than literally inhabiting the same space.
Fixed the post, thanks.
Emphasis mine.
Iām not sure Iād go this far.
The thing is, if youāve talked to publishers, they are generally like shady pimps.
I bet they coached him on what to say here.
I Sony constantly has a boot against his neck about making sure this is successful with all they invested.
Like sure heās clearly just an amateur programmer. Crashes on PS4 just shouldnāt be happening, especially on a modified version of a stable engine.
And yeah he talks like Molyneaux, maybe even worse. But he might have been forced to be vague and misleading like he is and to never let down the interviewer. To go along with everything.
People were idiots to preorder this $60 game made by 15 people in 2 years to start with. Iād say they should just never preorder a Hello Games or Sean Murray title again and make sure itās good first instead of ostracizing him, but people have been warned about preordering in the past and never learn.
Ermā¦ he has been ostracised since the Godus debacle, pretty much. Not just from angry people on the internet, but the press as well, yep.
Umā¦ no.
It appears the game got nearly a million in preorders between PS4 and PC.
On PC, there was 217,000 playing during the launch hour concurrently.
Thatās $30million in preorders or close to it. Thatās plenty for a 15 person team that spend ~2 years.
Pricing is a function of a mix between subjective cost, and making a return on investment. Well, unless they really spent $50mil on marketing (I donāt think so), they would have made bank on a $30 price point and people would have been much less ticked off.
You can have a game for $30 that cost 5x than a $30 Paradox game to make if it sells 5x as many copies.
This is very simple. Very, very simple.
Again, this is another of one of the big lies.
They showed gameplay, and said it was the game.
People did not get the gameplay they showed.
It doesnāt look nearly as nice as the pre-scripted E3 trailer. In every way itās worse.
Even on the video on the Steam store page right now, which passes itself off as being gameplay and not a CGI trailer, as itās in-engine with similar graphics, is a lie. Itās pre scripted and you canāt experience numerous things in it.
The whole thing is a lie. Thatās why people are pissed off.
Theyāre not pissed that they āfilled in the blanksā because they were vague, which they were. They are pissed because they were shown and told one thing (and are STILL being shown lies) and given another.
There are people that have gone from galaxy to galaxy. They found out that going to the center just teleports you to a new galaxy. Theyāve gotten maxed upgraded drive that lets them go to all the stars. That stuff people were shown is just not there.
You just have boring big invincible ships with a few turrets to destroy for credits, thatās it.
And you know they had the assets pretty much to add way more interesting things. Besides better planetary terrain gen, they could have had like huge crashed capital ships on the planets using modified models of the space ones, that could instead of the same drop pods and outposts on every planet. But nope. Itās so rushed and crap.
And not only that, but theyāve made some really stupid design decisions that make you think they had no one play testing it.
Like thereās so many things people are complaining about, that I see and complain about that I havenāt mentioned here, that are like āCOME ON, did anyone play this and not say that to themā?
Itās mind numbing.
Itās a bad game at any price point and should have had another at least 7 months with a few dozen more QA and testers.
At least you have these $15-$30 games that yeah are much more simple and not as pretty as the prettiest parts of NMS if youāre lucky to see them and ignore the bad popping and LOD, but those games are at least well DESIGNED and FUN.
Like the refilling shields and mining tool and stuff in NMS. Life support is automatically refilled from your inventory, but others you have to manually pause, open your inventory, and click crap to refill it.
Itās like āGee, thereās nothing to do in this game, letsā¦ add some more buttons for people to needlessly clickā. NO. IF YOU FEEL HAVE TO DO THAT YOU HAVE BIGGER DESIGN ISSUES TO DEAL WITH. They are just plain idiots who Iād not trust to design any other game again.
Btw, I loved that āWorth a Buyā review. That was pretty hilarious. So are a number of his reviews.
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