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[Amiga]

Their games aren't very good.

They've had so many at bats and a games media that gushes over them but they simply don't hit with the public.

There's something fundamentally wrong with their design. What that is, I'm not sure. I couldn't be bothered to play more than a couple of hours of both Dishonored games.



Fun is undefeated.

Progression is confusing. No consistency in what is interactive and what isn't. Confounded by the labyrinthian levels. Deathloop made it worse with the timeline order mechanic.

 

[Indyblue]

Funny timing for this thread cause I’ve just been realizing how much I like their games. Deathloop didn’t grab me at first and then I suddenly fell hard into once I got what was going on. Then I redownloaded dishonored and remembered how much I love it and that led to trying Prey for the first time.
I love their world building and art style.

 

[tusharngf]

People have moved away from first person games. This is what they are best at. They need to put one 3rd person game which are more mainstream.

 

[DeepEnigma]

People have moved away from first person games. This is what they are best at. They need to put one 3rd person game which are more mainstream.

Looks at CoD, Destiny, Apex, etc etc

 

[Platinumstorm]

I've played and beaten Dishonored. The world was quite drab, and I think I was off-put by the whole situation with the whale oil.

I review all of the games I play, and I try to make a system that is as objective as possible, but I like to include 10 points of "misc", which I think of as the "it" factor. I only gave Dishonored a 7 for the "misc" category. To make this a little more interesting, it's one of my only games to score a higher overall score than the miscellaneous score, which is typically in line with the overall score [84 overall for Dishonored].

When I think of Dishonored, the first thing that comes to mind is the word grey. I know that sounds idiotic, but I played that before med school, which fried my brain. I remember the game looking really washed out with odd moreso than interesting character designs.

I passed on Dishonored 2.
I own Prey, but I've always been a bit upset that it isn't like OG Prey, and I unfortunately haven't played it yet.
Deathloop I think looks fun, but it also screamed "bomb" every step of the way. When I think of Deathloop, I think of orange/sepia. It brings up that weird feeling from Dishonored. It's also visually unimpressive with lots of blocky looking environmental design.

 

[Neilg]

Im plenty calm.

lol you do like to calmly go off on a tirade though.
bioshock sold well and that's got a similar stylization. you just dont personally like it. and that's ok but you're coming across like you think of yourself as the visuals police.

Games with bad art and graphics sell well all the time. the only reasons arkane games don't sell well is because they are non traditional fps's that dont appeal to many people and almost always badly marketed.

 

[SF Kosmo]

Immersive sims are a small genre that isn't well understood by the gaming public at large. People like to put games into familiar boxes and that isn't one that has ever had the kind of breakout hit that makes it universally understood.

Of course there are other factors. Prey was saddled with a title that led to brand confusion and told them nothing about the game itself. Deathloop had a premise that was confusing and difficult to communicate and made people think it was a roguelite. Dark Messiah was a spinoff in a larger franchise and people didn't really know what it was supposed to be.

Dishonored 2 is probably the biggest puzzle for me. The first game sold quite well and a strong sequel should have sold even better. It didn't do terribly or anything but the decline in sales is a mystery to me.

 

[adamsapple]

People have moved away from first person games. This is what they are best at. They need to put one 3rd person game which are more mainstream.

Man this is such a gross over exaggeration.

People haven't moved away from fps games. The biggest selling game of the year is an FPS.

 

[remember_spinal]

Man this is such a gross over exaggeration.

People haven't moved away from fps games. The biggest selling game of the year is an FPS.

I think they mean single player FPS

 

[SlimySnake]

lol you do like to calmly go off on a tirade though.
bioshock sold well and that's got a similar stylization. you just dont personally like it. and that's ok but you're coming across like you think of yourself as the visuals police.

Games with bad art and graphics sell well all the time. the only reasons arkane games don't sell well is because they are non traditional fps's that dont appeal to many people and almost always badly marketed.

well, bad art and graphics were only part of my post. they can also improve their storytelling, cutscenes and boss fights.

bioshock was indeed similar but man it had a great art style and wonderful atmosphere. it was at the time a true graphical showcase. the bioshock infinite vertical slice before it was downgraded had this amazing sense of scale and was just as setpiece driven as the best Naughty Dog games. again, sold really well. i think Arkhane games will sell a lot better if they just tried to do what Bioshock Infinite ultimately couldnt do on the PS360.

 

[Mozzarella]

They need to make sexy waifus, when they do that their games will become more popular

 

[vaibhavpisal]

Just to clear the air in this thread, this is Deathloop director Dinga Bakaba:

Deathloop Director Isn't Worried About Sales Pressure: 'This Isn't Fast Food. This is Cuisine' - IGN

Deathloop director Dinga Bakaba says that Arkane has Bethesda's full support to "do Arkane things" and make original games that might not sell well.

www.ign.com

"We want to give players something that they really enjoy. Something that they will remember. Something that they will talk about. Maybe something that they will hate, but at least something that doesn't leave them feeling... apathy, basically. Apathy is the enemy of what we do," Bakaba says. "This is not fast food. This is cuisine. So maybe you don't like the taste, but at least there is this taste. It has a personality."

With Deathloop nearly complete, Bakaba expressed gratitude for Bethesda's support. "We are lucky that our publisher is actually like, 'Yeah! Do Arkane stuff! Do Arkane stuff! You are Arkane!' You know? So that's been really nice. Otherwise, a project like this could just not exist in the AAA space."

 

[Heisenberg007]

Using your metrics:

~ 16k players finished the game on PS5 in ~12-15 months
~ 14k players finished the game on Xbox in ~2- 3 months.

This is fantastic engagement on the Xbox userbase part.

Game Pass really does drive engagement.

Ghostwire Tokyo already felt like it came and went with a whimper. It will benefit greatly from more engagement next year with its re-release.

Umm ... although you're trying to spin it positively, you know that's not the case.

25,000,000 people could play Deathloop. Only 48,000 decided to play and finish the first mission. Out of those 73% stopped playing, and only 23% (or 13,000) found it interesting enough to finish the game. Out of 25 million people, only 13,000 finished the game.

Anyway, that wasn't the idea of my post. My idea was to have a discussion on what possible metrics could be used to measure the success of single-player games that launch on a subscription service, e.g., Deathloop on Gamepass and Stray on PS+.

 

[Heisenberg007]

I dont thnk the typical person cares what the success metrics are except people purposely looking for some kid of win.

Were you one of the people a year ago who got excited that YT view count and Twitter shares mean best sales since the average PS game gets more social media attention than Xbox? There were threads about that. And then when someone brought up Nintendo videos get much fewer views, but sell 30-40 million copies that entire thread came to a halt.

That's a very weird response, man. Not everything has to be a loss/win/console war.

We're not the "typical people." We are hardcore gamers who spend hours on internet forums discussing about games. And we can have an intellectual discussion on how these companies would measure the success of a single-player game launching on a subscription service (e.g., Deathloop on GP and Stray on PS+).

Your solution is to shut down the conversation and not even talk about it? Nice.

 

[Iced Arcade]

the downplay because of... reasons lol

Using your metrics:

~ 16k players finished the game on PS5 in ~12-15 months
~ 14k players finished the game on Xbox in ~2- 3 months.

This is fantastic engagement on the Xbox userbase part.

Game Pass really does drive engagement.

Ghostwire Tokyo already felt like it came and went with a whimper. It will benefit greatly from more engagement next year with its re-release.

That's what I got from that post the multiple times he's post it

 

[geary]

Deathloop was boycoted by Sony fanboys when they heard MS bought Bethesda.

/s

 

[ChorizoPicozo]

Deathloop was boycoted bu Sony fanboys when they heard MS bought Bethesda.

/s

You put /s

But we all know that its a games that is played by both sides.

 

[Imru’ al-Qays]

you heard it here first, Justin Bieber makes some of the best music according to @Men_in_Boxes

also he thinks that the Transformers franchise is among the best cinema out there.
and that the Resident Evil movies are the best game adaptations ever

This guy is on the record as saying Fromsoft should release a free to play battle arena game with microtransactions. One of the most utterly daft posters on here

 

[geary]

You put /s

But we all know that its a games that is played by both sides.

You dont see Sony games on MS platform. on release. These are special circumstantes. Everyone was is shocked with the aquisition news and this was obe way to retaliate

And /s

 

[ChorizoPicozo]

You dont see Sony games on MS platform. on release. These are special circumstantes. Everyone was is shocked with the aquisition news and this was obe way to retaliate

And /s

Yes Sony got forced to put MLB on Xbox and Game pass day one. Everyone is mad

/s

 

[geary]

Yes Sony got forced to put MLB on Xbox and Game pass day one. Everyone is mad

/s

/s

 

[adamsapple]

Umm ... although you're trying to spin it positively, you know that's not the case.

25,000,000 people could play Deathloop. Only 48,000 decided to play and finish the first mission. Out of those 73% stopped playing, and only 23% (or 13,000) found it interesting enough to finish the game. Out of 25 million people, only 13,000 finished the game.

Anyway, that wasn't the idea of my post. My idea was to have a discussion on what possible metrics could be used to measure the success of single-player games that launch on a subscription service, e.g., Deathloop on Gamepass and Stray on PS+.

Well, not every one of those 25m people are registered on TA, nor does every single of those 25m need to play the game to justify engagement, that's just absurd and no sub service ever has or will work like that. However, just based on those websites, 2 months of Xbox availability matches 14~15 months of PS5 availability. That's pretty good engagement for a year late port.

New, popular, games like High on Life are breaking game pass milestones. I don't know if we, the commoners, will ever be told officially just how many times these games get downloaded and how much money the developer made, whether it's a lump sump deal or a download based share. But at least all parties involved seem to be really happy in this particular example.

I don't expect different when big named OC like Starfield, Redfall release next year.

 

[StreetsofBeige]

That's a very weird response, man. Not everything has to be a loss/win/console war.

We're not the "typical people." We are hardcore gamers who spend hours on internet forums discussing about games. And we can have an intellectual discussion on how these companies would measure the success of a single-player game launching on a subscription service (e.g., Deathloop on GP and Stray on PS+).

Your solution is to shut down the conversation and not even talk about it? Nice.

You must be more hardcore than me to care about video game success metrics.

I just play games and enjoy them whether they sell endless copies or one copy. I just had a good time plowing through Roll Player on PC which I bought a week ago. It's a dice based game which SteamDB says the max people playing it was 26, and currently there's 1 person on Steam playing it (not me). Probably no more than a few hundred people have bought the game in the world. Who cares.

If you care so much about metrics you should focus on Sony's big Last of Us Part 1 sales which someone posted sales charts a week ago (it might had been UK sales) and it already dropped off the Top 20 PS sales charts after a few months.

You must be really scraping the bottom of the barrel of console warring to be comparing Game Completion Ratio %'s between platforms.

 

[Heisenberg007]

You must be more hardcore than me to care about video game success metrics.

I just play games and enjoy them whether they sell endless copies or one copy. I just had a good time plowing through Roll Player on PC which I bought a week ago. It's a dice based game which SteamDB says the max people playing it was 26, and currently there's 1 person on Steam playing it (not me). Probably no more than a few hundred people have bought the game in the world. Who cares.

If you care so much about metrics you should focus on Sony's big Last of Us Part 1 sales which someone posted sales charts a week ago (it might had been UK sales) and it already dropped off the Top 20 PS sales charts after a few months.

You must be really scraping the bottom of the barrel of console warring to be comparing Game Completion Ratio %'s between platforms.

Man, what is with the whataboutism?

This thread is about Arkane games not selling well. The conversation turned to the fact that now these games will appear on just Gamepass so sales won't matter, which is very valid.

Then someone responded with another valid point that, yes, sales won't matter as much, but if people don't engage with their content as much or if Arkane games don't bring lots of new GP subscribers, will they receive the same level of support and budget from Microsoft?

Which then led to the discussion of how will Microsoft measure the success of a single-player Arkane game that launches on Gamepass? And, more importantly, what is the right metric to measure that success: retail sales, # of total players, completion rate, time spent in game, etc.?

And you came in all defensive, pointing fingers at me and other games without understanding the context of the conversation, and contributing absolutely nothing valuable to the discussion!

To make things more clear, TLOU P1 is a straightforward case. It incurred X amount and would yield X amount by selling physical and digital copies across PS and PC. If the total revenue < total expenditures, it'll be a failure. Otherwise, it'll be a success. Very easy to measure. That's not the case with games that launch on subs, e.g., Deathloop on GP and Stray on PS+. Hence, the discussion.

 

[StreetsofBeige]

Man, what is with the whataboutism?

This thread is about Arkane games not selling well. The conversation turned to the fact that now these games will appear on just Gamepass so sales won't matter, which is very valid.

Then someone responded with another valid point that, yes, sales won't matter as much, but if people don't engage with their content as much or if Arkane games don't bring lots of new GP subscribers, will they receive the same level of support and budget from Microsoft?

Which then led to the discussion of how will Microsoft measure the success of a single-player Arkane game that launches on Gamepass? And, more importantly, what is the right metric to measure that success: retail sales, # of total players, completion rate, time spent in game, etc.?

And you came in all defensive, pointing fingers at me and other games without understanding the context of the conversation, and contributing absolutely nothing valuable to the discussion!

To make things more clear, TLOU P1 is a straightforward case. It incurred X amount and would yield X amount by selling physical and digital copies across PS and PC. If the total revenue < total expenditures, it'll be a failure. Otherwise, it'll be a success. Very easy to measure. That's not the case with games that launch on subs, e.g., Deathloop on GP and Stray on PS+. Hence, the discussion.

Please enlighten all of us on your success metrics.

To make things more clear, TLOU P1 is a straightforward case. It incurred X amount and would yield X amount by selling physical and digital copies across PS and PC. If the total revenue < total expenditures, it'll be a failure. Otherwise, it'll be a success. Very easy to measure. That's not the case with games that launch on subs, e.g., Deathloop on GP and Stray on PS+. Hence, the discussion.

I never knew LOU P1 making $1 more revenue than expenditures would be classified as successful. Please go on.

 

[The Stig]

No idea. Prey was awesome.

 

[sankt-Antonio]

Using your metrics:

~ 16k players finished the game on PS5 in ~12-15 months
~ 14k players finished the game on Xbox in ~2- 3 months.

This is fantastic engagement on the Xbox userbase part.

Game Pass really does drive engagement.

Ghostwire Tokyo already felt like it came and went with a whimper. It will benefit greatly from more engagement next year with its re-release.

Can’t directly compare the two because of the different cost barrier. I’m sure MS has calculated a factor (compared to direct sales) that a game needs to achieve to make them further support a studio that way.

 

[tusharngf]

Man this is such a gross over exaggeration.

People haven't moved away from fps games. The biggest selling game of the year is an FPS.

thats because of multiplayer.

 

[vaibhavpisal]

Kind of, yes. Better games end up selling more. Now, those games could be better in terms of visuals or gameplay or star power, IP power, or anything. And because it's an open market, people (with limited resources) end up choosing the game they prefer playing more.

Good games find a way to sell -- regardless of their genre and/or casualness. And I merely quoted a few examples of different types of games: TW3 (RPG), Elden Ring (hardcore Souls game), Persona 5 (JRPG anime game).

Riiighttt.

Sales are a completely accurate metric of quality of the game.

Ratchet and Clank must be terrible, they are making those games for past 20 years, have released 10+ games. Yet Rift Apart only managed 1.1 million.

Don't even ask about Returnal, Housemarque has been making games since 30 years. Still it manages just half a million.

Ratchet and Clank: Rift Apart Has Sold Over 1.1 Million Copies, Returnal Crosses 560,000 Units

Meanwhile, Marvel's Spider-Man: Miles Morales, available on PS5 and PS4, currently stands at over 6.5 million units sold worldwide.

gamingbolt.com

 

[wolffy71]

Deathloop was a bore

 

[diffusionx]

Just to clear the air in this thread, this is Deathloop director Dinga Bakaba:

http://[URL]https://www.ign.com/art...-pressure-this-isnt-fast-food-this-is-cuisine

[/URL]

"We want to give players something that they really enjoy. Something that they will remember. Something that they will talk about. Maybe something that they will hate, but at least something that doesn't leave them feeling... apathy, basically. Apathy is the enemy of what we do," Bakaba says. "This is not fast food. This is cuisine. So maybe you don't like the taste, but at least there is this taste. It has a personality."

With Deathloop nearly complete, Bakaba expressed gratitude for Bethesda's support. "We are lucky that our publisher is actually like, 'Yeah! Do Arkane stuff! Do Arkane stuff! You are Arkane!' You know? So that's been really nice. Otherwise, a project like this could just not exist in the AAA space."

That's a weird thing to say considering Deathloop is by far the least Arkane Arkane game yet. Does this guy know his own studio? Not a good omen for the future.

 

[ikbalCO]

Their game play great but looks bland and boring regardless of mechanich and/or art direction.

I love prey and like deathloop to some extend but i wouldnt be to eager to buy arkane game by watching the trailers alone.

 

[Heisenberg007]

Riiighttt.

Sales are a completely accurate metric of quality of the game.

Ratchet and Clank must be terrible, they are making those games for past 20 years, have released 10+ games. Yet Rift Apart only managed 1.1 million.

Don't even ask about Returnal, Housemarque has been making games since 30 years. Still it manages just half a million.

Ratchet and Clank: Rift Apart Has Sold Over 1.1 Million Copies, Returnal Crosses 560,000 Units

Meanwhile, Marvel's Spider-Man: Miles Morales, available on PS5 and PS4, currently stands at over 6.5 million units sold worldwide.

gamingbolt.com

Rift Apart and Returnal both launched on a platform with less than 10 million PS5s in the wild at the time. 1 million units make for an attach rate of over 10%, which is wayyy more than most games, including Arkane's.

When you contextualize it in its entirety, both those games sold extremely well and in line with the top-performing and top-selling AAA games in the industry.

 

[vaibhavpisal]

Rift Apart and Returnal both launched on a platform with less than 10 million PS5s in the wild at the time. 1 million units make for an attach rate of over 10%, which is wayyy more than most games, including Arkane's.

When you contextualize it in its entirety, both those games sold extremely well and in line with the top-performing and top-selling AAA games in the industry.

Dude get over it. This is not a good argument. Ratchet games are being made for too long. And have never sold close to 20 million.

Arkane aims for 2 million sales per game. And it's successful if it meets dev expectations and help fund next game.

That's a weird thing to say considering Deathloop is by far the least Arkane Arkane game yet. Does this guy know his own studio? Not a good omen for the future.

They are making Redfall as well.

They try new stuff. He knows Arkane pretty well.

 

[geary]

That's a weird thing to say considering Deathloop is by far the least Arkane Arkane game yet. Does this guy know his own studio? Not a good omen for the future.

That’s strange to say considering many see Deathloop as a reskined Dishonored with a twist.

 

[engstra]

I want to give their games a fair chance because on paper they sound like games I would enjoy but anytime I try them it just doesn't click.

People always rave about their level design but I actually find this to be some of the worst aspects of their games. I have been playing Deathloop recently and I find that I get to one of the areas, spend an hour or more exploring the entire map only to shoot a couple of enemies but not progress the story or find anything of value. It's just a semi-big open map with lots of verticality but nothing interesting about it.

 

[Heisenberg007]

Dude get over it. This is not a good argument.

I share actual data, and that's not a good argument. What is a good argument, then?

Elden Ring, one of the most critically and commercially successful games, sold 17.5 million copies with a potential user base of more than 300 million customers. That's an attach rate of 5.83%.

Returnal and Rift Apart had an attach rate of ~10%. Considering you'll see diminishing returns with a larger userbase, the 5.83% is pretty much in line with 10% -- both being extremely successful. That's also why Sony purchased HouseMarque after Returnal's success and continued with Insomniac's 3rd team (Rift Apart), instead of letting them go.

 

[Wildebeest]

The system requirements of Deathloop were very high compared to Dishonored. Dishonored had a last gen multiplatform versions, while Deathloop was next gen single platform only. The requirements are higher than Elden Ring on PC and many people complained of poor performance, apparently because it was defective by design due to the crippling game killing power of denuvo, with people reporting that a 3080 was required to play the game smoothly, and this was before the crypto crash. Naturally, the sky-high "professional reviews" barely mentioned the bad performance on PC other than something which could be easily ignored.

 

[TheGodfather07]

I remember the game being 50% off on the ps store very quickly after release. The game was a total flop. I doubt it even broke 1m sold. I'm not surprised because I thought the game was a bore. Couldn't get into it.

 

[JayK47]

Dishonored is free on Epic right now. No reason to not pick it up.

 

[.Pennywise]

Might be because they put too much agency on the player's own creativity rather than the everyday on-rails game. And when said player doesn't get to a proper point where they can get all the juice out of it, they end up having a worse experience than your yearly CoD campaign.

 

[Rick Dangerous]

I hate to think that Arkhane, a développer with talent has now been swallowed by Microsoft.

Their audience is going to shrink because whatever you think, Xbox audience is, to put polite words on it, very USA mainstream culture centered (Michael bay and other so interesting stuff..). They'll lose all PS players that play their games.

 

[MALpractice311]

This is the reality of the situation as much as I hate to say it.

They find an audience with the hardcore because of the deep, open-ended nature; their design flatters the experienced gamer.

But they aren’t polished or slick enough to appeal to the mass market, they ask too much of the casual gamer that just wants to be taken along for a ride.

I think Deathloop attempted to address this with little success.

This right here. I've really liked most of their games, Deathloop being the notable exception, but they need to understand where their bread is buttered. If they're going for the experienced/hardcore gamer, which most immersive sims do, they need to set appropriate revenue expectations and, consequently, appropriate budgets, including marketing, for their games. Conversely, if they really want more sales, they are going to have to abandon the immersive genre and really dumb down their future games, Deathloop being a major step in the dumbing down process.

 

[LordCBH]

Because they aren’t making anything with mass appeal. Which is fine. Dishonored was the tits. So was dishonored 2. Didn’t care for Deathloop.

 

[SteadyEvo]

They’re just not my cup of tea
What’s so great about them? The freedom to play how you want? Sneaking around and upgrading powers?

Prey? Wtf is this? I dunno. Different strokes for different folks and all that. Arkane games do absolutely nothing for me.

 

[WitchHunter]

Hm... Ark fatalis, dark messiah, prey was aok. Everything else was a bad bad bad dream. Wolfenstein and dishonored are so terribly fucked up games, these are the epitomes of baaaaad game design. I havent finished any of those and that's telling.

 

[ChoosableOne]

Probably because of the stealth mechanics. I suppose fans of Fps games don't like those mechanics that much. Prey and Dishonered were pretty good, I'm waiting for a sequel to Prey.

 

[Rippa]

Maybe they should stop copy pasting all their FPS games.

Move to something more action oriented instead of stealth and in third-person view. Or will that be too expensive because of extra animations and development time?

Fucking samey FPS games with their floating hands and guns on my screen!

 

[RoboFu]

Yeah throw me into the camp of “ they just are not that good “

Nothing they have put out makes people excited for their next game and I think that’s key to sales.

Like platinum doesn’t constantly make great games .. some are awful.. but they have made enough to warrant some excitement from some people to hype their next game.

Arkane hasn’t put out anything than other than a decent experience at best.

 

[wipeout364]

They are one of the best studios out there and the fact that they get as much output as they do when they are only 150 employees blows my mind. The reason they don’t hit the big numbers is simple. Their games are not mainstream. They are like many other studios that create niche titles with their own created IP. I am not sure who the OP is comparing them to when they talk about disappointing sales?

Bethesda has always run a very tight ship with regards to studio size. They are the opposite of Ubisoft and Activision (specifically COD).

From Software has 350 employees, CD project Red has 1100. The Far Cry 6 team was 600 people, Spiders has 70 employees for context.