Yeah, we’re in the same boat. I’m going through the backlog, but I have yet to truly find my comfort food even though those two games are excellent. Especially PoE2.
Regardless, agree on your points. The latter two franchises have shown that live-service can be done well. Though I still don’t quite get how Warframe pulls it off… I guess it’s that they never broke their model while Bungie… you know.
For Last Epoch, the campaign wasn’t even finished and then suddenly. Don’t write checks you can’t cash, I guess.
They should have just put a fork in it when it became very apparent early on it was too ambitious for the studio to handle. And that was long before it blew up in popularity. Now the game has been unprofitable for the past few expansions and their owners are coming to collect. Live service was a massive, greedy mistake as Bungie is also not learning with D2.
Sony seemed to want it to fail. Reviewers only got their hands on it shortly before release. Most didn’t like it. Marvel Rivals was dropping soon. It was doomed.
They jumped the gun releasing without a campaign at launch. People were merciless in reviews about that. It’s better since that was added but still feels a bit hollow. I hope this isn’t a mistake because it has potential and seems like it’s evolving quickly.
One thing I rarely see pointed out is the generations that made 8 and 16-bit a huge success were aging out, or heading to college and/or the workforce. The casuals I knew stopped buying systems after the SNES and Genesis.
I was bummed when I saw it launched in a crappy state. I thought it looked really neat as well. From recent reviews it seems they have fixed a ton of stuff and are rapidly working on other things so I copped it. Hopefully I can finally play it this weekend.
I didn’t know it existed until a popular streamer begrudgingly “reviewed” it at the last minute. Found it strange that there was zero marketing for such an expensive and long developed investment.
They kinda screwed up the timing with it. Launched when everyone and their mother already had a PS2 and got left in the dust. Was also difficult to get one due to limited supply. People tended to buy one console and stick with it for 5+ years, so the only people standing in line were fans or people with money to burn.
In addition to what others said, due to the architecture it was notoriously hard to develop for. The Playstation dev kits were a dream to work with in comparison. Sega of Japan hedged their bets on 2D remaining king due to the Japanese market preferring arcade ports and slowness to accept change, and slapped on some 3D capabilities almost as an afterthought. Meanwhile Sega of America assumed the US market would scoff at spending 500 on a console when the 32X had just released and was very similar (and also selling poorly).
Sony took risks by pushing 3D hard, were aggressive with pricing, did a ton of marketing, and completely ate Sega’s lunch. Despite the Saturn being arguably more powerful and better made than the PS1, it wasn’t enough to right the ship. And it continued on this downward spiral due to the negative impressions that Sega was dying with the Dreamcast where they again flubbed the launch timing while people were enamored with the N64 and the PS1 had a massive library.
There were lots of other shenanigans involved, I’m skimming the surface here. Regardless, both consoles have some bangers and I recommend trying some out if you ever have the chance. The hardware is also very cool if you can find them cheap but might need refurbed at this age.