A few dozen hours of content over the course of a month; I don't think it's strange that the player count dropped substantially. Live service games just broke how people think about video games, and this isn't a live service.
Yeah, the game’s popularity comes directly from it’s gimmicky nature and not from any actual good gameplay loop. Not a single idea, mechanic, or even item is original.
I played for two days with friends and got over it. And I imagine for many, once the appeal of the gimmick wears thin, it’s all and over with
Its a fun and engaging game that im sure will have more fleshed out as development continues. I wouldn’t call it gimmicky at all. Some people play for a bit then stop either waiting for updates, to play another game (lots of good games came out around its release) or for literally any other reason in my case i broke my hand.
There’s such a vanishingly small amount of things that are truly “new” in the 21st century. I’d say just about everything ever made in the last few hundred years hardly counts as “new” - it’s just synthesis of things that came before, probably from nature if you go back far enough.
Novelty truly comes from combining existing things in ways that haven’t been done before. In this regard, palworld has done BRILLIANTLY, taking the best parts of some other games, putting them together far better than those other games, and getting something that’s way more than the sum of parts.
Palworlds real failing at the moment is simply that it’s early access. The game is fantastic until you hit a middle point where content just falls flat. But, again, it’s early access. If there’s ever a thing to be written off during early access, it’s not all the content being done.
You’re acting like 337k concurrent isn’t still amazing. Its still the 5th highest concurrent on all of steam at this very moment. Games launch with high concurrent and its only natural for it to decline after a month. Especially when it’s a game with a finite amount of content. This is a game where you play it, beat it, and then it’s done until there’s an update with more content. It’s not a live service game where they are trying to get you to continuously play. I got over 100 hours in this game before beating all current content after 2 weeks. I’m more than satisfied with the $28 I paid for it. And ill play it again when it gets new content. If you like the survival genre and or pokemon, this game is worth a shot. It’s one of the funnest games I’ve played in a while. The sense of progression is great. But this game won’t be for everyone as we all have our preferences.
It’s almost like a few other games that are hugely popular got released and initial launch numbers never stay that high regardless as the novelty wears off and only the really committed players come back regularly.
Not surprising after the initial hype wears off. It’s not like this is a game that has a ton of long-term things to do. And it’s still very buggy. I imagine a lot of people will sit it out until there’s some sort of major content update.
Not sure I buy this. I don’t think there’s a lot of appetite for a half-generation update when most people don’t even feel there’s much that takes advantage of the PS5.
I would like to see investigations into embracer being opened for fraudulent acquisition of companies and IPs and therefore market manipulation. I‘m obviously not thinking they did commit a crime there but it should definitely be illegal. Or were all those companies on their last legs? I cant imagine they were.
I can’t give you an answer to the legality question, but some additional information I heard in a podcast: The acquisitions came at a time when money was cheap and people were playing a lot more video games because of the pandemic. Unfortunately, they miscalculated because money is now much more expensive again and the gaming industry has not been able to retain these players across the board. Only 4 games that have come out since then have brought in much more than the production costs, which then had to finance the remaining ~15 (all from my memory, but it should be in the order of magnitude). That didn’t work out and so now cuts have to be made to avoid burning even more money.
If you understand German, I can send you a link to the podcast, if you’re interested.
Thanks for clarifying though. I feel like this should still be illegal. As a CEO, you are expected to analyze and somehow predict what is gonna happen, by market observation, paying experts, etc. If your company goes bankrupt, you‘ll get investigated to see if you made obvious mistakes you shouldnt have made. Dont ask me where I know this from…
In any case, embracer destroyed so many companies due to their foolishness, they should definitely get this treatment and get dismantled if they were acting reckless - which isnt a big stretch imo.
Volition surprised me by staying open as long as it did. It hadn't made a hit since Saints Row IV, and it had several high profile flops since then. I would have loved for Free Radical to finish making a type of FPS that doesn't get made anymore, but apparently they spent two years of that studio's life chasing Fortnite.
Why are they spending all this money to aquire studios and IP just to cancel them? Presumably they need to release products to get a return on their investment, so why are they just sitting on stuff?
The ONE time people wanted Ubisoft to just reskin one of their games (Black Flag) they instead chase live service money while having WAY less features than a 10 year old game.
People forget, but Ubisoft had the same reputation 10 years ago they have today. Even 10 years ago the prediction was this game was gonna be ass. Delay delay delay, people have played Sea of Thieves to death and are onto new things, THEN Ubi drops a lacklustre beta where you can’t even get out of your ship. Yup. Sounds about right.
I don’t need to get out of my ship, but maybe you could let me direct my crew on how they attack. Let me arm my crew differently. Let me change my crew as an item. Let me hire individual crew members as “items”.
To me it seems like a “we gotta get SOMETHING out the door” scenario and they made a “cohesive” game out of what was finished and hope that it lives long enough to add the other stuff.
I found myself wanting to log on last night which shocked me, the setting and ship combat definitely works for me. I wish there was more but sea of thieves didn’t do it for me.
It’s like they took Black Flag and said “everyone wants a Sid Meier pirates remake … let’s try that” but they didn’t give us dancing or ship boarding.
There is so much potential and it’s wild that they seem to have created the “core” but it’s taken them this long to get there.
kotaku.com
Aktywne