macfoshizzle
Member
I wish they would announce a spiritual successor to the original series for PC.
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Age of Empires Castle Siege announced
- Thread starter RoyalLaFlame
- Start date
Yea I saw Etherlords the other day and threw up in my mouth.
Barack Lesnar
Banned
"As of March 31, 2014, the game has sold 680,000 copies in Europe and North America.[25]"
Like I was saying, the genre is dead. Spending 2 or 3 years developing a AAA game to sell 700k copies isn't going to get it done. It sucks, RTS is one of my fav genres. I still remember playing Red Alert over a 28.8 modem.
Age of Empires IV would be a huge undertaking. Minimum 2-3 years development, that's a AAA sequel. How else would they do the franchise justice?
Rushersauce
Banned
not like this... NOT like this.
Ol No Bones
Banned
I might try it. Looks like a good phone game at least.
SerTapTap
Member
Bring back good memories of another game.
Oh man, Lords of the Realm 2 was sweet. I'm sure I've long since lost the disk like most of my early PC games.
It will already be out on the Windows Store, I guess for touch devices only? But it's right in the trailer. I guess I could play it on my Surface Pro 3...then delete it and download Age of Empires 2 HD instead...
Potentially? The same people who give Supercell this much on a daily basis.
The game's not for you, but it is for someone. And MS has judged that this "someone" is a more lucrative market than you are.
Sentenza
Member
You keep making ass pull claims about the market and its reasons. Where's your proof about the genre being dead?
Starcraft 2 sold several millions. Age of Empire used to be arguably the biggest RTS franchise just behind Blizzard products, and it had the differentiating factor of appealing to a vastly different audience ranging from core gamers to middle age people.
Age of Empires III had a lukewarm reception, was heavily criticzed by most core fans of the franchise and released in a historical moment where PC gaming was arguably at its worst in term of popularity and sales and STILL managed to sell over two million copies.
SO, care to point what's exactly "delusional" about my claim that a *good* AoE today could sell above two million copies?
Possibly without making shit up in the process.
Because I don't just think I'm not delusional, I actually think I'm being reasonably conservative, too.
By making a solid game with a smaller budget, mainly coming from the graphics/art side of things.
Making it a game that is accessible to tons of people on a varying level of hardware with solid mechanics seems like a much better bet.
I think your arbitrary "AAA or die" stance is the source of your confusion here.
You do not know how game development works if you think the financial requirements for an RTS in terms of content are anywhere near those for a typical modern AAA title. Most of the time and cost requirements for AAA games are related to the huge amount of unique asset creation required to build a linear cinematic experience of any decent length without repetition. An RTS game like AoE is intrinsically cheaper to develop because a huge amount of the content is fundamentally designed to be experienced repeatedly (same 3-4 tilesets required for an entire campaign of maps, same sets of models and voice sample sets used for units, most of which are shared among the factions in the game) instead of linearly.
Fox_Mulder
Rockefellers. Skull and Bones. Microsoft. Al Qaeda. A Cabal of Bankers. The melting point of steel. What do these things have in common? Wake up sheeple, the landfill wasn't even REAL!
nope nope nope
Those are almost 700,000 copies in ONE month. Rome 2 has sold well over 1.5 million copies by now in about 8 months.
We're not asking for some ridiculous Halo 5 budget. You can make a really good strategy game with a small, talented team in a couple of years.
For 5-10 million dollars and with the right team you can make a kick ass sequel to this game, and you can EASILY double your investment - ~175,000 - 300,000 sales at $40 should do it and that game would sell a LOT more than 175,000 copies.
Barack Lesnar
Banned
AoE games are massive. I don't know how you could make a real sequel with a smaller budget. That's a bold claim to make... a lot easier said than done.
CoH2 released on June 25, 2013. That quote of its sales says as of "March 31, 2014". Correct me if I'm wrong but that's not one month.
Guys, we are totally supporting the PC gaming community this time. I swear on me mum!
Well, I guess we can add another entry to this list:
http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showpost.php?p=100400267&postcount=6
Well, I guess we can add another entry to this list:
http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showpost.php?p=100400267&postcount=6
This is categorically untrue. They're massive in terms of mindshare, absolutely. RTS games are naturally less intensive in terms of asset creation than any AAA today.
Barack Lesnar
Banned
AoE3 had what, 8 nations? Each with some distinct units. It had natives, it had a campaign, multi-player, and really good graphics for its time, easily the best of any RTS out when it released...not even close. If you want them to make some barebones sequel with average graphics for $5 mil or whatever that guy above said, then don't call it Age of Empires IV.
NaDannMaGoGo
Member
I really don't agree with that. RTSs require a ton of models, including a lot of different animations if they want to be considered high quality. Sure, it doesn't have to be as much as say Starcraft 2, but a proper Age of Empire game would still have lots of assets.
bobawesome
Member
You people sure do love to whine about mobile games, don't you?
When it's a major downgrade of a beloved franchise, I believe it's deserved.
Dead Prince
Banned
kinda wonder if support will even last a year.
Wiktor
Member
Ermm...look at how crazy Starcraft 2 sales have been . It's the fastest selling RT of all time an. AoE is the second biggest IP in tje genre. If Starcraft 2 still sold like crazy new AoE would too. Especially since strategy games are booming right now and pcgaming as a whole completely dwarfs the state it was in 2000.
You got petite indie strategy games like Reus selling 700K, ,Civ V is nearing 6 mlns and Total Wars are constantly increasing their sales too.
The reason why Microsoft won't make the game is simple:Xbox. Nothing else. They see PC gaming as direct competition to their console, so every dolar spent on PC gaming is not only a dolar that could have been spent on Xbox, but it's a dolar spent againt Xbox. AoE wouldn't work on Xbox,same with Flight Simulator. So they get killed, despite the fact that they were highly profitable.]
Also...this is RTS genre, not open world sandbox genre. "AAA" level here is very low, with team counting dozens, not hundreds people and budget not needing to be more than 10 mln dollars. Those are very cheap games to make. Enough that they can bring profit with even 1 mln units,let alone 3-4 this could easily sell in entire lifetime
Sentenza
Member
To be honest I mostly like to ignore mobile games.
It's just painful when you have to watch a franchise you used to love going to die in the mobile gaming graveyard.
UnblessedSoul
Member
Looks like they didn't learn from age of empires online, you don't take a popular pc franchise and turn it into f2p mess, they should have continued to evolve the game every few years on pc as a full paid game with expansion dlc, and maybe as a side project develop something related to aoe on mobile/tablet if you wish. I'd fire all microsoft management who green lighted these decisions.
Barack Lesnar
Banned
That's Starcraft. It's like using Diablo 3's 15-20 million sales as a baseline. Blizzard is in another stratosphere in terms of sales.
By the way, anecdotal of course but Heart of the Swarm was the first Blizzard RTS game (full or expansion, and including Warcraft 1-3) that I never bought, which was something I never thought could happen.
My only question for this is how could AoE be competition to their Xbox? It's a genre that's non-existent on consoles. A full-fledged AoE4 sequel would have no impact on Xbox at all in terms of competition.
I don't think they would see it as competition so much as simply resources that could be going to improve that console's offerings.
I think even a budget as high as 25 million for this game would end up returning a really nice profit for them.
There are some great mobile games out there.
When publishers take beloved franchises they are doing nothing with only to crap on the name in their transparent attempts to clone success, you can bet fans of said franchises are not going to like it.
Doesn't mean they are just whining about mobile games because they are mobile games, but I'm pretty sure you can't understand those reasons. You just like to whine about the whiners =)
Open Source
Banned
I think it's more about the opportunity cost of development dollars and IPs being used for mobile F2P shitware. EA effectively killed the Dungeon Keeper IP when they attached it to one of those games, practically guaranteeing there won't be a real DK game for a long time. I figured Microsoft did the same with AoE Online, but this should hammer the nails into the coffin.
Sentenza
Member
Are you even trying to pay any attention to the discussion?
Two distinct people already pointed to you that AoE used to be the second biggest franchise in genre.
Not to mention no one is predicting to see a new AoE dwarfing Starcraft in sales, which is why my estimation -the one you labeled as "delusional"- was of "merely" two millions copies sold, against the several millions sold by Starcraft II (one million just in the first day, something like 4,5 in the first month).
That's precisely the point. By not being on consoles and being something capable of remembering to people that Xbox isn't the alpha and omega of gaming, it implicitly becomes a "competing product" to the Xbox brand for Microsoft.
Or at least that's how they used to act in the past decade. hard to say if things are going to change now.
Wiktor
Member
And AoE is another stratosphere in terms of sales compared to other RTSes aside from Starcraft. It's like saying investing in Assassin's Creed doesn't make sense because they sell less than Call of Duty titles each year. Sure...AC isn't as big, but it's still ridiculously massive IP that has no problem making huge profit with each entry. AoE is the same in RTS genre.
Not according to Microsoft. Every dolar I as a PCgamer spend on PC game is a dolar that I should have spent on Xbox. Every hour I've poured into playing on PC is an hour Microsoft fialed to make me spent on their console.
Microsoft views every pc-only gamer as failure on their part. It's ridiculous, but that's just how the company operates. The internal sabotaging and bickering there is legendary and you can bet any attempt at doing anything truly pcgaming friendly is instantly torpedoed. You even recently had Valve vet trying to do something and then running away after few months.
Barack Lesnar
Banned
AoE3 sold 2 million lifetime. Regardless if it was a disappointing sequel or not, how is that in another stratosphere compared to non-Blizz RTS games?
Do you even know what game genre you are talking about when you post in this thread?
maquiladora
Member
I avoided clicking on this thread because I was worried of what I found when I did click on this thread. Ugh.
Barack Lesnar
Banned
I'm sorry, what?
The last Anno game, 2070, has also sold more than 1M copies. http://connecteddigitalworld.com/2013/08/14/celebrate-the-15th-anniversary-of-anno-online/
Wiktor
Member
First of all, no..it didn't sell 2 mln units in lifetime. It sold that much till mid 2008.
Second...you think quality of a game has nothing to do with it's sales? Especially for a pc title where sales aren't frontloaded and instead are spreat through multiple years, so pre-launch hype matters little.
And third, you could make a worthy seque lto AoE IV today and still make a a good profit with even only 2 mln sales. That is ignoring how much better the current pc market's condition is than when AoE III launched. But even if it was as bad as in 2005 you could still make great profit with 2 mln sales of AoE IV.
Meanwhile, you're unlikely to make any real money on this F2P monstrocity. Even games like those on iOS and Android flop in 99,99% of cases. And it being WindowsPhone/8 exclusive kills any financial viability this project might have
