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Lightbox (Starhawk) lays off 24 people, moves to iOS development
- Thread starter Kifimbo
- Start date
Not guaranteed ...
MrDanger88
Member
Not surprising. Starhawk's sales numbers were downright laughable.
SuperSonic1305
Member
They will all come crawling back in a few years once the mobile game market is so saturated with software that every game they release fades into obscurity in days.
Atleast ESP made a good game and it sold well decently. 500k i think .
Starhawk was awful and the fans who loved warhawk hated it
I know, i was one of the fans that loved Warhawk
Spent over 1000 hours on it and never bought StarhawkMaybe you should speak for yourself?
gaming_noob
Member
Can we round the numbers on how many studios have been closed by MS and Sony this gen? Sorry I'm on my slowass iPhone 3g so I'm sorry if it's mwntoned.
They weren't closed by Sony.
I know, i was one of the fans that loved Warhawk
I hear ya! The ol ps3forums BnW clan was awesome fun! I never played Starhawk once.
a) they're not closed
b) they were never a Sony studio.
Damn right it was, man. Pity that forum went to shit.
funkystudent
Member
Ok I think its safe to say this strategy by SCEA to fund the foundation of smaller independent teams was a bust.
Eat, Sleep, Play went through the same thing. Founded by ex staffers and was financially backed by Sony. They then release one game that is poorly marketed and not really up to snuff with other big budget multiplayer games and they get out of there contract and run off to mobile.
I wont be shocked if the same happens to Superbot.
Eat, Sleep, Play went through the same thing. Founded by ex staffers and was financially backed by Sony. They then release one game that is poorly marketed and not really up to snuff with other big budget multiplayer games and they get out of there contract and run off to mobile.
I wont be shocked if the same happens to Superbot.
Yeah also the game took too long to come out (5 years!) because they spend too much time and resources for the single player, bad move. People just wanted a sequel to Warhawk with improvements and new game modes. Bam release the game less than two years after Warhawk at a 20-25 bucks, but nope they went to a whole another direction that people did not like at all.
I dont think it will happen to superbot and their game will better then both of them combined
Yep. I wandered around different forums but ended up here. Better here by far!
Yeah same here.
I think Sony did this with a few others [?] in the past as well
Agent X
Member
It's sad to hear about the layoffs affecting LightBox Interactive.
It also sucks that we might not see anymore full-scale games from them for console platforms. However, I doubt the transition to mobile gaming was a sudden decision, but rather a move that they had planned for months. I do hope for the best for their team and their new focus; perhaps they can toss out something for PlayStation Mobile fans as well.
It also sucks that we might not see anymore full-scale games from them for console platforms. However, I doubt the transition to mobile gaming was a sudden decision, but rather a move that they had planned for months. I do hope for the best for their team and their new focus; perhaps they can toss out something for PlayStation Mobile fans as well.
Fusion Pizza
Member
That's sad news, hopefully those guys can find jobs elsewhere.
When did you start hating on Starhawk? Seems sudden.
TheUnknownForce
Member
It somehow seems right that this was announced by Wario64.
Best of luck to those laid-off. But...what could LB make for iOS, given the style of game they made on consoles?
Clear
CliffyB's Cock Holster
funkystudent said:
I really wish people would stop with this "marketing can sell anything" stuff. Its just wrong on so many levels.
You shouldn't need a huge spend to sell a product. Whatever happened to word of mouth? Sales growing organically based on recommendation and buzz?
Does everything have to be created by throwing huge sums of money at a marketing budget and payola for corruptible publications?
Beyond that if you have a huge marketing spend, that's even more money to recoup from sales, and generally speaking only happens when there's massive confidence in the product to begin with.
The reality is that in 9/10 cases the fate of a product is decided based on focus groups and marketing test feedback long before it gets launched. If the sales prediction looks bleak you will most often see your marketing budget go down, not up, because its pointlessly risky to double-down on an outside bet.
And more than anything else, if you think marketing is an issue, the absolute last place you'll turn to iOS where you are at the mercy of whether Apple deigns to feature you on their storefronts, and happen to launch at a time when the big boys aren't hogging the spotlight via promotion or discount.
Except without lots of marketing, games will be buried on the iOS store. Games on iOS don't automatically sell 3 billion and make £1,000,000 revenue per day.
GhostWriter24
Member
So Lightbox goes Kickstarter. For fucks sake, man...
Man-is-Obsolete
Member
I can't say it enough this game had no chance after the beta.
specialguy
Banned
it was one of those caught in the middle, not top line or heavily hyped games that really struggle these days. being on xbox too wouldn't have helped this type of game imo.
Other than I guess, probably a doubling of sales or so, which sounds good but probably still wouldn't have effected this overall outcome.
When i played it a month back and also played warhawk in my friends house. He was a huge warhawk fan.
Though I applaud they supported the game well with the DLC, Patches etc and that too free.
Truly, the beta was terrible. The only word of mouth this game got was negative. It just feels so wrong.
Yeah, because that caused Valve/et. al. that has gone that route harm before, right?
OH WAIT.
No the issue was that the multiplayer had a 32 TEAM build item limit, and because of that you were constantly fighting your public team to expand bases in objective modes. And because of that problem people complained to Lightbox about it during the BETA phase. But they didn't listen until after the game launched (and dropped like an A-bomb) two months or so later, which is past the point where most people are going to care if you fixed your game after a sub-par beta that turned many people (including me, actually) off.
Really, Lightbox should've listened to fundamental issues during the beta and why some Warhawk players were hating it because they had completely valid reasons for some of the issues.
theman5141
Neo Member
Yeah, this is rather portentous.
The number of developers either closing shop entirely or re-structuring around the notion of maximizing returns on bite-sized, shallow experiences is staggering this gen.
The number of developers either closing shop entirely or re-structuring around the notion of maximizing returns on bite-sized, shallow experiences is staggering this gen.
J
Jotamide
Unconfirmed Member
An omnious grim future we have ahead...
Man-is-Obsolete
Member
Exactly, people like myself were in the Beta forums calling for prebuilt permanent structures and capturable bases that could be fortified and expanded by Build and Battle in November of last year. 7 months! 7 months before release. People saw this coming, they refused to adjust. Instead they put out a few surveys around what people wanted, wanna guess what those surveys consisted of? Primarily questions about Hawks and how they control. They focused on the wrong things and ultimately paid the price.
Sad I know, but I have to feel that if they had perm. structures and capturable bases this game would have had a lot better beta and thus better sales.
The Take Out Bandit
Member
Rest in Peace.
Sadly I saw this coming as well.
Now Western developers now have the equivalent of Pachinko Hell that formerly sweet Japanese developers have been relegated to for years now with mobile game development.
Does anybody from the Sony forums recall the Dylan Jobe photoshop thread from a few months back? I saved this image from there:
Such a shame. Warhawk was one of the most unique experiences on any of the current consoles this generation, and Starhawk threw that all out the window to pursue demographics that could give a shit about what Warhawk offered. It made assumptions about console gamers playing a resource limited game like PC gamers, but then dumbed down other mechanics that wouldn't scare off PC gamers (flight mechanics).
Sadly I saw this coming as well.
Now Western developers now have the equivalent of Pachinko Hell that formerly sweet Japanese developers have been relegated to for years now with mobile game development.
Does anybody from the Sony forums recall the Dylan Jobe photoshop thread from a few months back? I saved this image from there:
Such a shame. Warhawk was one of the most unique experiences on any of the current consoles this generation, and Starhawk threw that all out the window to pursue demographics that could give a shit about what Warhawk offered. It made assumptions about console gamers playing a resource limited game like PC gamers, but then dumbed down other mechanics that wouldn't scare off PC gamers (flight mechanics).
Man-is-Obsolete
Member
And me and this guy used to butt heads a lot in the Starhawk beta thread, he really wanted this game to be great. So did I.
Hydrogen Bluebird
Member
This was my main problem with the Single player. It wasn't a single player campaign but more like a tutorial.
blitzcloud
Banned
You see, it's partially a problem of the kind of game they do.
They do good games. Warhawk was amazing, but I didn't buy starhawk. Why? because it requires dedication. A dedication that can't be found for many games nowadays due to time constraints and the amounts of games released in a small timeframe.
They do good games. Warhawk was amazing, but I didn't buy starhawk. Why? because it requires dedication. A dedication that can't be found for many games nowadays due to time constraints and the amounts of games released in a small timeframe.