Usually, one waits to see some long-term results before making grand proclamations. You know, kind of how an announcer doesn't call the first to leave the gate the winner of the race, but waits to see the actual finish.
In not much over a score of hours, the game has completely dropped off the Steam top sellers list. Even old games like Counter-Strike: Source, widely panned recent games like Brink, and minor new games to Steam such as Limbo are beating it. So much for its blockbuster, COD:Black Ops beating (hello, PC Gamer magazine) hype.
Speaking of Limbo - even if it is the kind of game that you'd consider way off the path of your game preferences, I highly recommend you give it a look. A demo is available (unlike TWI, the developer / publisher Playdead has nothing to fear scaring off potential revenue by offering a demo of the game), and the game itself is a steal at under $10.00. Dark, ethereal, and haunting, it offers a beautiful environment with satisfying and sometimes twisted puzzles. System requirements are paltry - you can play it on a very low specification machine.
The best five hours I've spent on a game in some time.
Rob
Posts
lol
ReplyDeleteWell, it's #14 right now... certainly not a hot seller.
RO2 will be available in 3 weeks and honestly, I'm not impressed at all. Sure you can now preorder the game, but there's nothing out there that will convince casual FPS players to buy this game. Most gamers are interested in Multiplayer these days. Yet, there's no Multiplayer footage (WITHOUT BOTS) available for this title...
ReplyDeleteAlso, the date for the *open* beta has not be revealed yet. This might just be me, but 3 weeks for a beta seems way too short. Just look at BF3 for example. The game is coming out in more than two months and the beta has been out for a few weeks now.
The reality is that RO2 will be released on the 30th of August because Tripwire doesn't have the choice to release the game later. BF3 and the next COD title are forcing them to release the game more early and that's probably why they look unprepared at the moment. Which is certainly not better because right now, there's barely nothing to convince casual players to buy this game except for the TF2 hats that comes with it in the Deluxe edition and the Killing Floor skins.
Remove those things, and the game would already be out of the Top Sellers list...
I personally feel ROOST is an amazing game, so I'm willing to cut them some slack. They can't possibly mess up the RO formula too much.
ReplyDeleteI agree with the lack of proper HD footage, though. It's insane. A few weeks from launch and all we have are shakycams. I know they're small but that's no excuse - How hard would it be to record some HD footage from an in-studio session or whatever? I can record 60FPS HD 16:10 footage effortlessly with FRAPs on a 8GB DRAM rig with an i5 2500k + 580GTX, no performance hit ingame. It's a problem they could solve in five minutes.
@ Anonymous 8/5/11 14:28:
ReplyDeleteNice machine specs!
I think there's good reason we've not seen detailed footage - beta servers crashing dozens of times per hour when trying tanks does not make for good footage.
At this point, based on their behaviors, I'd wonder how "real" (vs edited, enhanced, "faked") any released footage might be. Same unfortunately for footage from current beta foamers.
Once the (now not so open, but only for paying pre-orders it seems) beta is out, I hope to see footage from players like you - no marketing / edited BS.
I agree - the original RO, and the retail OSTFRONT were quite good for such a small team, warts and all. I'll leave judgement for the latest iteration for when I see / play it.
It's the marketing BS, lies, censorship, drone producing behavior of TWI that has turned me off to the brand. But even ass-hats with moronic (mostly, but not all) communities can produce good games. Time will tell.
Rob
I believe that developers can optionally choose to let the sales counter for the top games tick when the game is available for pre-purchase or only start showing it after the game is released.
ReplyDeleteTWI likely hit the switch so that it will show the sales of the pre-order after release, so that once it releases the game stays higher on the top sellers list for a while.
The original Red Orchestra was on the nr.1 spot of the top sellers for a few months (early steam time), killing floor was on the top for roughly 1 month. If the marketing for RO2 will indeed come alive in august then it should somewhat easily be able to beat TWI's previous games.
TWI touted that they would put a much bigger marketing budget and make the game known in august. This marketing campaign likely hasn't started yet, although time is getting shorter every day.
@ Zets 8/5/11 15:56:
ReplyDeleteNot what Valve contact says. Is this what TWI staff has told you and you actually believe that to be true?
Look at how it has popped back on to the bottom a few times - do you really think TWI is jiggling a switch? And that Valve would allow such blatant manipulation?
I hope not - more likely, pre-sales numbers are mediocre - let's be real - if they were so awesome, TWI would be using that as marketing fodder, and giving numbers (if only rough ones.)
We will see.
If you have information to the contrary, and can share it (re: Valve sales "switch"), I'd be happy to post it. Or I'll poke Gabe and post if there is such a thing. Readers want to know - they are cancelling pre-orders as we speak...
Rob
I read something a while back on the steam forums, so its not the most credible source so I could be wrong. But it was in the nr1 spot one night and completely went off radar when I woke up. Since I heard that thing about a switch before I assumed TWI popped it.
ReplyDeleteIf it pops up at the bottom from time to time then its likely just not selling that well and I could be wrong ^^.
There has still been nothing close to a big marketing push so far. Without that the game likely won't have a lot of pre orders.
TWI said in their forums that they would do a big marketing push in August. Not much has been shown yet so its a wait to see what TWI is thinking off in that regard.
In a worst case scenario it will be like Red Orchestra and Killing floor, in the sense that there will hardly be any marketing. Meaning that like Roost and KF most sales happen likely 1-2 months after release, after reviews run in, from both press but mostly word of mouth between different gamers, and people uploading videos on youtube etc.
And now RO2 got delayed. This will give them some extra breathing room for marketing, I suppose.
ReplyDelete