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